


what is and will be (is you and me)

by momentofmemory



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Kid Fic, Kid Peter Parker, Loss of Parent(s), Mother-Son Relationship, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Canon, Precious Peter Parker, Protective May Parker (Spider-Man)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentofmemory/pseuds/momentofmemory
Summary: The precinct is wildly disorienting at first: the high exposure of the fluorescent lights, frantic cops milling about without apparent rhyme or reason, phones and pagers filling the air with their high-pitched screams. Stone-faced detectives with blood-spattered shoes.It’s a frazzled secretary that gets to them first, but whatever she says is lost to May’s ears—because at that moment, all she sees is Peter.(Or, 5 times May was there for Peter, +1 time he was there for her.)
Relationships: Ben Parker/May Parker (Spider-Man), May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker
Comments: 206
Kudos: 302





	1. follow me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bubbles _inside_?” Peter looks a little skeptical, but the way he rocks forward onto his tiptoes suggests he's very pleased by the concept. “Mother says bubbles only grow outside.”
> 
> “Well, that’s because she doesn’t have the special bubbles,” May says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written as a fill for the fictober prompt "Just follow me, I know the area."
> 
> No beta for this chapter—all mistakes are my own. :)

Peter is three the first time he spends the night with just May.

Ben’s off on a week-long conference in D.C.—some kind of retreat that promises to boost his salary by another figure, but in reality exists only to make the company more attractive to future employees. May’s been fully anticipating having a night to herself, and by mid evening she’s already made it through half a glass of chardonnay and the first chapter of Barthes’ _Criticism and Truth._ She's busy dumping an entire bottle of bubble bath, added to the three bath bombs already fizzing in the warm water, when the phone rings.

There’s nothing particularly special about the occasion—Richard and Mary have some kind of last minute out-of-town trip this evening, and their normal babysitter isn’t available. The slightly damp pages of Barthes’ essay wilt under May’s fingertips as she listens to Mary begging her to take Peter on for the night. Watching over their nephew is usually Ben’s prerogative, and she’s not sure if she can handle it on her own. It’s not that May doesn’t _like_ kids—she has a soft spot for Peter in particular, actually—it’s just that she’s never entirely sure what to _do_ with them. Plus, it'll mean shelving her "me time" to, well, another time. Still, she’s never been able to say no to her sister-in-law, and surely she’s handled worse than a toddler before. Mary, for her part, is breathless with gratitude in that over-the-top but genuinely sincere manner so unique to her, and says she’ll drop Peter off in half an hour. 

May hangs up the phone and knocks the faucet handle to the off position with her hip. She’s still uncertain about what she’s just gotten herself into, but it’s too late to turn back now.

She spends the next few minutes in a flurry of activity, trying to turn the apartment into something more suitable for a child. This largely involves shoving some things onto higher shelves, other things under couches, and still other things—mostly weeks-old food—down the disposal. By the time the doorbell rings, she’s considerably more winded, but the upside is that nothing looks like it could kill a toddler any more.

“Coming!”

She takes another half a second to pour the remainder of her chardonnay down the drain, and tucks the bottle back into the wine cabinet. After a rueful pause, she stows Barthes away, too.

 _Next time_ , she promises herself.

The doorbell rings a second time, so May runs her fingers through her hair and hurries to open the door. Mary immediately breezes in, filling the room with her effervescent presence and effusive apologies, but Peter trails in slowly after—content to occupy only the smallest amount of space, fist curled tightly around a handful of his mother’s bright yellow raincoat. May notes that his gaze seems fixed in the vague vicinity of her head, but doesn’t quite meet her eyes. She doesn’t remember Peter having issues with eye contact, but she files that away for later as Mary hands her a list of all the things she needs to know: bedtime, emergency contact numbers, favorite TV shows, dietary requirements, and the like. Mary seems oddly nervous, but May just chalks it up to having to leave Peter in her questionably competent hands.

Finally, Mary bends down and says goodbye to Peter, who has yet to say a word, and May shepherds her towards the door. Her sister-in-law pauses at the threshold and turns back, nodding covertly in Peter’s direction.

“Separation anxiety,” she whispers, leaning in conspiratorially. “Rich says it’s perfectly normal at his age, but he’s gotten real clingy the past couple weeks. You’ll call me if anything comes up?”

That doesn’t help assuage May’s own nerves, but she nods anyway. “The very second.”

Mary’s eyes light up, and she pecks her on the cheek—that Parker exuberance for physical affection in full force. “I’ll be by to pick him up at nine tomorrow. Thanks again!”

May waves goodbye, closes the door, and lets her hand linger on the wooden frame for a moment. She is most definitely _not_ afraid of a three-year-old.

She turns around to find Peter planted firmly in the spot his mother had left him. His gaze has finally left her, trained now on the floor, and May can see tears starting to collect in the corners of his eyes. She bends down in front of him, the way his mom did, and smiles encouragingly, the way Ben does.

“Hey, Peter,” she says.

His eyes snap to hers. May crosses off the theory that he might dislike eye contact, because while she’s never been sized up by a toddler before, she’s very sure that’s what’s happening now.

She clears her throat. “Wanna give me your backpack so you don’t have to carry it around?”

Peter’s fingers play with the frayed edges of his straps, and he gnaws at his lower lip as he ponders May’s question. May’s just about to assume she’s done something terribly wrong when he finally blurts out—

“Blue?”

May’s caught off guard, but the backpack is blue so maybe that’s just what he calls it. “Yeah, we need to take off your blue—”

“No.” Peter shakes his head emphatically. “ _You’re_ blue.”

May glances down at her shirt, affirming that it is, in fact, orange. She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “What’re you—”

May’s fingers get tangled in something wet and sticky, and when she pulls her hand away from her hair, the semi-translucent shine of blue soap comes with it. She rubs the substance thoughtfully between her fingers, remembering that one of Mary’s stipulations included a bath.

Peter’s still watching her, so she holds her hand out and, after a moment’s hesitation, he pokes a finger at the wet spot.

“How,” May asks, while he decides what to make of the slimy texture, “do you feel about bubbles?”

“Bubbles _inside_?” Peter looks a little skeptical, but the way he rocks forward onto his tiptoes suggests he's very pleased by the concept. “Mother says bubbles only grow outside.”

“Well, that’s because she doesn’t have the _special_ bubbles,” May says, a little abruptly in an attempt to save what’s clearly a parenting technique on Mary’s part.

“Oh.” Peter starts to struggle out of his backpack, a task only managed when May takes pity and extracts him from its overly complicated clutches. Once freed, he clambers up onto a chair and hangs his backpack neatly on the second coat hook—exactly where Ben always puts it. “Can I see?”

May’s about to point him towards the bathroom, which is directly down the hall, when her eyes land on the tiger patch ironed to the front flap of Peter’s backpack.

A spark of mischief makes its way into her eyes. “Depends. Wanna go exploring?”

Peter’s eyes widen at the thought, his reticence slipping away. “Like a quest?”

“Mm-hm,” May agrees. “The Quest for the Blue Bubbles.”

Peter’s head swivels around, as if he expects the bubbles to appear spontaneously now that they’ve decided to go after them. “Where?”

“Well, that’s what we have to find—”

Peter takes off like a shot before May can finish her sentence, racing to the closest door with the kind of wild abandon only a three-year-old can muster. The tips of his fingers just barely reach the knob, but he doesn't let his stature keep him from yanking the door open. May laughs at the scowl that crosses Peter’s face when he’s rewarded only with access to the pantry, instead of the bubble kingdom he’d been envisioning.

“Wrong way, Tiger,” she says, inspired again by the patch. She nods towards the hallway. “We have to get through the jungle first.”

Peter's frown disappears as quickly as it came and he scrambles back over. “Okay!”

Much to her surprise, he slips his hand into hers and squeezes tight. She’s momentarily struck by how _small_ it is; how neatly it fits into her own.

“Just follow me,” she says, giving him a mock salute with her free hand. “I know the area.”

And she does, which means despite the small size of the apartment, she’s able to lead them on a wildly circuitous route towards the bathroom. They crawl under the kitchen table and chairs, newly dubbed The Wooden Cavern, avoid the floor-lava by leaping across a row of equidistant pillows (helpfully supplied by May), and clamber up and over every piece of furniture that can hold their collective weight. By the time they make it to the door, giggling and out of breath, the last vestiges of Peter’s shyness have vanished.

May’s not actually sure if any of the bubbles are still around at this point, as it’s been a bit since she started the bath, but she has plenty of bottles in the cabinet. She can make more easily enough. As she looks at the anticipation in Peter’s eyes, she finds she doesn’t mind sharing in the least.

“Okay, Tiger,” she says, crouching in front of the door. “It might be booby trapped when we go in, so stick close to me while I get the bubbles out.”

Peter’s brow scrunches up. “Why are the boobies trapped?”

“The what?”

“Boobies have blue feet,” Peter says, talking more to himself than anyone else. “And bubbles are blue.”

“Well—” May makes a note to ask Mary what exactly they’re feeding this kid when she picks him up tomorrow—“Let’s not let that stop us. You ready?”

Peter claps his hands together, another giggle escaping him. “Yes!”

May throws open the door and they both tumble onto the slick tile. Peter’s mouth falls open at the sight that greets them, and May finds herself transfixed, too.

Beautiful, bright blue bubbles spill out of the bathtub in droves, some floating languidly through the air while others collect in fluffy, gravity-defying piles on the floor. The frigid outdoor air that’s helped the bubbles keep their shape blows in through the open window, and light from the street lamps reflects off the bubbles to paint an iridescent glow on the walls. Water drips into the tub, stirring up additional bubbles, and May realizes she must not have turned the faucet all the way to the off position in her haste. The awestruck expression on Peter’s face makes her glad for the mistake, even if cleaning up the soapsuds and puddles collecting on every surface will be a pain later.

Peter ditches his clothes with a speed May wouldn't have believed possible if she hadn't seen it herself, and launches himself chest-deep into the suds. May leans over to close the window, blocking out the cold, and then turns up the hot water—in for a penny, in for a pound.

“These are the bestest bubbles,” Peter says, molding the suds in his arms into castle spires.

May kneels on the floor by the tub, careful not to slip on the tiles, and can’t help but agree. She’s made herself bubble baths plenty of times, but never one so magical as this one. She watches a stray bubble start to float away, and blows it gently towards her nephew.

“’Course they are,” she agrees. “They’re _my_ bubbles.”

The bubble hovers briefly in the air before popping on Peter’s nose, sending him into another fit of giggles.

“You’ll see, Tiger,” May says, deciding Barthes doesn’t have anything on Peter. “I always pick the best things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would give my whole heart for May & Peter, ngl. <3333
> 
> The remaining chapters of this 5+1 are already written, and will be posted as my revising schedule allows—rating & tags will change as the story progresses (but no archive warnings and no higher than T). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Come scream at me in the comments or on [tumblr](http://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/)!


	2. what is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The precinct is wildly disorienting at first: the high exposure of the fluorescent lights, frantic cops milling about without apparent rhyme or reason, phones and pagers filling the air with their high-pitched screams. Stone-faced detectives with blood-spattered shoes.
> 
> A frazzled secretary gets to them first, but whatever she says is lost to May’s ears—because at that moment, all she sees is Peter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see from the new tags, this one's much heavier than the previous one—canon is not kind to poor Peter. Fortunately, Aunt May is. <3
> 
> No beta bc once again I've worked right up to my self-imposed deadline, so all mistakes are my own. :)

Peter is four the night everything falls apart.

May and Ben are sound asleep when the phone rings, sending Ben tumbling out of the covers and groping for the handset. May’s barely awake, but the phone’s volume is loud enough that she catches the key words coming out of its tinny speakers: _brother_ , _sister-in-law_ , _fatal_. That sends her out of bed faster than any alarm ever could.

She follows Ben into the kitchen, feet ghosting across the floor, and hears more words that she knows but refuse to make sense. Ben nods mutely into the phone: face ashen, hands white knuckled.

They’d all been together just yesterday—the weather was nice, so they’d had lunch at the park. Mary had just found her first silver hair and Richard was teasing her about it relentlessly, particularly since May is seven years her senior and has yet to lose any of her signature red. 

May glances at the clock just as its hands meet. The bell dings: once, twice, twelve. Midnight.

May is forty-two. Ben is forty-one, and Richard is thirty-eight, and Mary is thirty-six.

Peter is four.

Ben hangs up the phone with a finality that scares her. He catches her eye just long enough to shake his head, then collapses into the dining room chair.

It’s the first week of August, so Peter is four, but Peter _will_ be five in one week, six days. A year after that, Peter will be six, and then seven, and then eight, and then on and on and on. Dozens of birthday parties and well wishes and homemade cakes and store-bought presents.

Peter is four, and Peter will be five. But Richard will always be thirty-eight, and Mary will always be thirty-six.

May places a hand on Ben’s shaking shoulder and swallows past the noose around her neck. “Where is he?”

“Police station.” His voice sounds like he’s aged a decade, his own mind having flown through all the years his baby brother will never see. “Hundred and seventh precinct.”

May does not cry. Instead, she goes to their room and mechanically pulls on warmer clothes and a pair of boots, then collects her keys and purse from the dresser. After a moment’s hesitation, she grabs a stuffed tiger out of Peter’s toy bin, too.

Ben sees the animal, and cries for them both.

The ride to the police station is silent, but for the sound of Ben trying to piece himself back together over a hole that won’t mend. May drives and knows she should say something, knows she should _feel_ something, but she’s too afraid that if she starts the process she won’t be able to stop.

Ben is not the only person who will need her tonight, and forty-one years is an eternity longer than almost-five.

Despite the odd hour, or maybe because of it, she winds up having to park nearly four street blocks away. It’ll cost them ten minutes of walking time, the same amount they saved in driving. This kind of thing is exactly why May thinks they should sell the car and use the train like every other New Yorker, but she’ll never bring it up.

The car had been a childhood dream of Ben’s: he’d grown up watching sitcoms where the stars always had a car, or a truck, or even a motorcycle, so he’d scrimped together every spare penny they had during their first fifteen years of marriage to make it work. He’d joked it was their ticket to that middle-class, suburban-living, happily-ever-after kind of life.

Rain soaks into May’s skin and ruins her hair, and she and Ben walk to a police station at midnight.

Thirty-eight, thirty-eight, thirty-eight. Thirty-six, thirty-six, thirty-six.

Four.

Somewhere along block three, Ben shifts beside her. “We’re his closest next of kin.”

Her husband’s eyes are bright, fixated on anything other than her own. Her footsteps quicken.

“Let’s not talk about this right now.”

She wishes he would leave it at that, but the Parker Stubbornness she married him for is in full force, and he’s not about to let her off so easy.

“I’m not saying we have to make up our minds right away,” he says. “It’s just that he—I just want something to _tell_ him. A sense of stability would—”

“Not _now_ , Ben.”

It comes out harsher than is strictly necessary, but May can’t help it. Not when the curve of Mary’s smile, the animation of her hands, is dancing through her vision.

Ever since that first night May spent with Peter, there’s been no question that she adores her nephew. It’s not accepting Peter that’s the problem. It’s the idea that if she does, all of this becomes tragically, irrevocably _real_. Her role has always been that of an Aunt _,_ and it’s one she’s treasured—how can she even dream of taking the place of Mary? Mary, the younger sister she never had, whom she loves just as deeply and freely as Peter himself?

Beside her, Ben is quiet—both rain water and salt water streaking the lenses of his glasses. She slips her hand out of her pocket to find his.

“I’m sorry,” she says, threading her fingers through her husband’s. “Now is just… already too much.”

Ben says nothing in reply, but the gentle squeeze of his hand is enough to let her know she’s forgiven. A scant few seconds later, they’ve arrived at the door to the precinct. Ben clears his throat and waits until she looks at him to speak.

“You and me, okay? No matter what we decide.”

May nods, forever grateful she’s not having to do this alone. They step through the doorway together.

It’s wildly disorienting at first: the high exposure of the fluorescent lights, frantic cops milling about without apparent rhyme or reason, phones and pagers filling the air with their high-pitched screams. Stone-faced detectives with blood-spattered shoes.

A frazzled secretary gets to them first, but whatever she says is lost to May’s ears—because at that moment, all she sees Peter.

“Ma’am, you can’t—”

May shoves her way past the younger woman, confident Ben will handle it, because Peter is alone and Peter is scared and _Peter is four_. She stumbles past several officers and a desk covered with photos, one of which features a bright yellow raincoat stained crimson. Her stomach lurches in recognition— _oh god, please don’t let Peter have seen—_ and then she’s kneeling in front of him.

He’s hunched in the corner farthest from the door, knees tugged up to his chest and an orange shock blanket pulled tightly around his shoulders. His eyes are red-rimmed, tear tracks carving giant swathes out of the ash and dirt covering his face. 

May’s tempted to swoop him up right then and there, but his posture is so reminiscent of a wounded animal she settles for resting one hand on his sneakers.

“Hey, Peter,” she says softly. She pulls the tiger out from under the protection of her coat and leans it against his knees. “…I brought someone to see you.”

It takes a second for Peter to register their presence, but eventually his gaze moves from his hands to the tiger, and then to May’s face. May has to blink back tears from her eyes when she sees the ones spilling out of his.

“…Aunt May?”

She barely has time to react before Peter’s flung himself onto her, stuffed animal and orange blanket entirely forgotten. His grip around her neck is impossibly strong, despite his full body shivers, and there’s a desperation to it that gives May the impression he’s afraid she’ll disappear if he lets go for even a second.

Her mind whispers _thirty-eight and thirty-six_ , and May realizes that’s _exactly_ what he’s afraid of.

“Daddy said to be—be—good,” he says, hiccups punctuating his words. “He said it’d be okay if I listened and I did, I _did_ Aunt May, but I couldn’t get them to—to—”

“No, no, sweetheart, it’s okay, you’re okay,” May says, sweeping him fully into the safety of her lap and rocking gently back and forth. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Peter shakes his head into her shoulder.

“I couldn’t get them to wake up,” he cries. And then, louder: “ _W_ _hy wouldn’t they wake up_?”

May’s chest aches with the sound of their hearts breaking, and all she can do is cradle Mary’s child tighter.

“I’m so sorry, Peter,” she says, carding her hands through his hair. “I’m here now. I’m here.”

Peter’s body finally catches up to him and all at once he’s wracked with the sobs of a four-year-old boy who’s been trying very, very hard to be brave, and has finally been given permission to not be.

May cries silent tears of her own and rubs slow circles on his back, ignoring the stares from the rest of the building’s occupants. All she cares about is the immeasurable grief in Peter’s words as he whispers _I listened, I listened_ into her tear-soaked shoulder. She buries her face in his hair and her tears mingle with his, because she may be forty-two, but _god_ this hurts.

May hears the sound of her husband’s footsteps, and then he’s here, too: arms wrapped around both of them and whispering gentle words of comfort into Peter’s ears. She closes her eyes and breathes in the scent of Ben’s aftershave, and they stay like that until Peter’s sobs begin to dwindle.

“Sir? Ma’am?”

An officer in her mid-thirties hovers a few feet away, a handful of pamphlets on foster care in hand.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt, we just need to… I have the papers for…” The officer trails off, clearly shaken by the entire ordeal. 

May looks at her and thinks _thirty-six_.

Ben starts to stand and May grabs his hand before he can leave, giving him the slightest shake of her head. Understanding passes over his face, along with a small, grateful smile. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something he presses into the palm of her hand, then guides the officer a few desks away. May looks down and sees what it is, and the first real smile ghosts across her lips, too.

Peter’s hands twist in the fabric of May’s jacket, and he pulls back just far enough for them to see each other’s faces.

“Are they going to take me away?”

May’s hands still from where they’d been playing with the object, startled by the perceptiveness of his question.

His lower lip trembles at her lack of response, and he uses one tiny fist to scrub the tears from his eyes. “They wouldn’t—no one would tell me what’s going to happen—now.”

“Now?” May repeats.

She glances over at Ben, who’s in the middle of turning aside the pamphlets and asking the officer how long it takes to finalize a kinship adoption instead. May picks up the discarded shock blanket and wraps it around Peter’s shoulders.

“Now,” she says, brushing his hair away from his eyes, “now you listen to _me_.”

She waits until she’s certain she has his full attention, then opens her fist so that Peter can see what Ben had given her, too.

“Do you know what this is?”

The object in question is a tall, slender, translucent bottle with a white, heart-shaped cap. It’s barely as long in total as May’s pinky finger, but when Peter picks it up, it seems twice as large in his hands. He shakes it once, then frowns when he hears the sloshing noise inside.

“…Bubbles?”

“Mm-hm,” May agrees. “But not just any bubbles. These are from your parent’s wedding.”

Peter’s eyes widen. It’s normally kept in their memory box at home, but Ben must’ve grabbed it when she was getting ready.

May remembers with a pang how odd everyone had found the bubbles at the time. Sending the bride and groom away in a shower of bubbles was a rare phenomenon, as most were still using the more traditional rice or birdseed in the late nineties. Mary had insisted on it, though—she always had been ahead of the curve. 

Perhaps it was because, on some level, she knew how short her own curve would be.

May pushes down the memory and helps Peter unscrew the cap. The bubbles don’t last long when blown—grown stale from age—but there’s just enough surface tension to allow them to float for a few seconds before fracturing midair. The soapy residue splashes wet, concentric circles onto the tile, washing away the dirt one tiny bubble at a time.

“Your parents’ve always loved bubbles,” May says eventually. “Because they loved them, Ben and I have been keeping this all these years. We’ll always keep whatever your parents loved, Peter.”

May pauses to wipes a streak of ash off of Peter’s cheek with her thumb. “And there’s nothing they loved more in this whole world than you. Do you understand?”

Tears reappear in Peter’s eyes and he curls up to her chest with a nod, one arm draped around her neck and the other holding tight to his parents’ gift. Peter’s always been good at understanding exactly what she means, and this time is no different.

“Forever?” May can feel his tiny, four-year-old heartbeat fluttering next to hers.

She wraps her arms tighter around him and picks them both up off the floor. “Forever.”

It’s a dangerous thing to promise, considering what’s just happened, considering all that could. But May’s not giving Peter the promise of a physical forever: this is the kind of forever that says it has no destination, no predetermined stopping point. The kind of forever that says she'll be there for him, and when she can’t, she’ll find someone else that can. The kind of forever that says that she’s forty-two, and while Mary will never reach that age, she’s going to do everything she can to make sure her child does.

This is the kind of forever that says, _I love you._

Peter burrows his head into the crook of May’s neck and she settles him against her hip, then she walks over to Ben to finish up the last of the paperwork. There’s a lot of things to go over, it turns out, and eventually she just closes her eyes and rests her cheek against Peter’s head, listening to his breathing until the adrenaline fades and he drifts off to sleep.

She knows they have a long way to go. Papers to sign, end-of-life matters to settle, grief counseling to pay for, schools and pre-schools to select. But right now, none of that matters.

Because right now, Peter is four.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written as a fill for the fictober prompt "Now? Now you listen to me?"
> 
> Also, a quick note on the ages: Aunt May's is based on what Marisa Tomei's irl age was in 2006 (the approximate date for this chapter), and then the remaining ages for Ben, Richard, and Mary were extrapolated from there.
> 
> You are more than welcome, as always, to come scream at me in the comments and/or on [tumblr](http://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/). <3


	3. the month of may

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The school runs a little later than most of the facilities in New York, which means May rarely has any trouble picking him up by the three o’clock release. Today, however, May doesn’t arrive until seventeen minutes after three—just barely missing the fifteen minute grace period—but she’s not worried about the late fee. Because today, the court systems that always seem to move at a glacier pace have finally pulled through: May has Peter’s custody papers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it madness to post a chapter set in May during the holiday season? Definitely. Will it stop me? Apparently not.
> 
> Special thanks to [LuthienKenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienKenobi) for walking me back from the ledge when I hit draft seven of the revision.

Peter is five by the time the adoption finalizes.

It’s eight months since the night Peter moved in. It’s a hard adjustment for all of them—but the first few weeks are the hardest by far. Peter cries himself to sleep more often than not, and on four separate occasions Ben makes it all the way to the restaurant he and Richard used to meet at, before he remembers Richard is gone. May, meanwhile, has the hardest time remembering not to tell Peter to ask his mother for things.

The times she doesn’t catch herself are even worse.

Still, they’re slowly falling into a routine that, while not quite comfortable, at least feels familiar. Peter’s kindergarten—a fairly prestigious school Mary had already enrolled him in—plays a large part in that. It gives Peter the chance to make friends and act like a normal kid, and it also gives him somewhere to go during the day so that May can return to work part time.

The school runs a little later than most of the facilities in New York, which means May rarely has any trouble picking him up by the three o’clock release. Today, however, May doesn’t arrive until seventeen minutes after three—just barely missing the fifteen minute grace period—but she’s not worried about the late fee. Because today, the court systems that always seem to move at a glacier pace have finally pulled through: May has Peter’s custody papers.

May’s heels click cheerfully down the busy sidewalk in front of the school, the manilla folder in her purse shifting with every step. Her fingers drift down and brush across the raised seal of the New York Office of Child and Family Services, and she can’t help the grin that forms. It’s bittersweet, to be sure: she’d rip up the papers in a heartbeat if it’d bring Mary and Richard back. But it won’t, so she chooses instead to focus on the hope that it brings: the promise of forever.

She wants Ben to know first, though, so she pulls her Blackberry out of her pocket as she’s buzzed into the school. She leans against the cement block walls to pull up Ben’s number, remembering that the cell service cuts off further down the hallway, then frowns.

A tiny red notification hovers over her email application.

May’s thumb clicks the cursor away from the address book, puzzled. Her email is only pushed to her phone from a limited number of addresses, to save on data charges, and she can’t imagine what could count as a high priority on a Tuesday afternoon. After a moment’s indecision, she opens the app and sees that it’s from Peter’s homeroom teacher. Her curiosity morphs into unease as she waits for the body of the message to load, the arrow spinning around a pixilated earth only increasing her anxiety.

When it finally pops up on her screen, she wishes it hadn’t.

> _As it’s the beginning of May, Peter’s class has started making cards for their parents. Regrettably, some of the children may have been a bit insensitive to Peter with their remarks. I assure you that the instigators have already been dealt with, but Peter’s mood has yet to recover and I fear the damage may have already been done—_

May locks the screen without finishing and shoves the phone deep into her pocket, hoping it takes her rage with it. The teacher’s note is maddeningly vague, but she knows there’s only one reason kindergarteners would be making cards in May: Mother’s Day.

And Peter’s just lost his.

The folder in her bag feels like fire where it leans against her hip, and she has no idea how she thought it could represent anything but loss for her five-year-old nephew—that it could be anything more than proof that his old life is permanently, irrevocably, gone.

May decides then and there that she’s not going to tell Peter about this after all, at least not until after Mother’s Day has passed. Some other time when the loss doesn’t feel quite so close.

But for now, it’s twenty minutes and counting after pickup, and May knows what Ben would say: do what’s in front of you, and worry about the rest later. May swallows her heart back down into her chest, paints on a smile, and walks the remaining hundred feet to the pickup area.

She’s not entirely sure what she’s expecting, but the sight of him playing quietly by himself, looking for all the world like it’s a perfectly normal day, is definitely not it. The rest of the kids are gone, having been picked up at a reasonable time—May explains to the disinterested secretary that she’s late because she had to get to the post office before it closed, though he doesn’t seem to care either way.

The only indication that something’s bothering Peter comes when May finally makes her way over to him.

Her shadow falls over him and he looks up, hands still wrapped around a toy train. His eyes widen.

“You’re here?”

It’s an odd question, and May swears there’s a hint of fear in Peter’s expression as he says it, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came.

“Yeah, Tiger,” she says, hoping her own voice doesn’t sound off. “Where else would I be?”

Peter shrugs like he wasn’t the one to introduce the topic. Then, he shifts his backpack onto his shoulders and struggles to his feet. “Grocery time?”

“…Mm-hm,” May says. That is their traditional next step, but Peter seems too keen to move on. She tucks his hand into hers and starts walking towards the exit before trying again.

“So,” she says, the text of the email scrolling across her mind’s eye, “how was school today?”

“Good.”

Peter, a born chatterbox just like his mother, hasn’t answered an open-ended question with one word since the second he learned complex sentences existed. For whatever reason, he clearly doesn’t want May to know what happened.

May tries to remember what Peter’s psychologist said about denial, but then the folder thumps against her side and she decides that if Peter doesn’t want to deal with the topic of mothers, she doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on, either.

“Come on,” she says instead. “How about I tell you about the ridiculous buskers I saw on the subway this morning?”

They spend the rest of the afternoon in the same manner, dodging around any topic that seems remotely important. They make a mad dash through the market before it closes, miss their subway stop because they’re too busy counting the dried wads of gum stuck to the seats, and then make increasingly complex Lincoln log towers until Ben gets home around six. May knows she’s going to have to bring up the folder eventually, but she also knows that right now Peter is happy and giggling, and the thought of ruining that feels impossible.

The arrangement from that point is a simple one: Ben cooks and May cleans, and whenever they want to get nothing done, they let Peter “help.”

May and Peter are in the middle of washing the dishes when May’s stalling technique collapses.

“May?” Ben calls from the living room. “Did you move the nail clippers?”

“Yeah!” She’s mostly preoccupied by trying to keep Peter from breaking any of the glassware. “I think they’re in my purse.”

She’s forgotten about the folder entirely until she hears Ben’s sharp intake of breath. Peter notices, too.

“What’s that?”

May whirls around at the sound of Peter’s voice. Soap and grease drips from her fingers, and she instantly knows she can’t lie to him.

She swallows and pats her hands dry.

“Let’s sit.”

Ben catches her eye, trying to figure out what the problem is, and May mouths _email_. His eyebrows raise and she trades him her phone for the envelope, then follows Peter to the kitchen.

May sits down and Peter follows suit, his hands clasped on top of the table even though it’s too tall for him to do so comfortably. He looks so serious, his posture so formal, that for a moment all May sees is Richard. Then she blinks, and he’s back to being a scared five-year-old.

Ben reappears in the doorway, his clenched jaw making it clear he’s read the message, so May clears her throat.

“I got a very important letter from the government today—”

That’s as far as she gets before Peter bursts into tears.

Before she quite knows what she’s doing, May’s leaping out of her chair and pressing Peter to her chest, shirt instantly drenched. She thinks she knows why Peter’s upset, until he chokes out:

“When are they taking me away?”

It’s only then that May realizes she’s interpreted everything completely, entirely wrong.

“No, no, honey, no one’s taking you away,” she says, horror filling her voice. “Where on earth did you get an idea like that?”

“Because—because—Edward said you’re going to leave me,” Peter wails.

“Edward said _what—_ ”

“Why don’t you have Peter open the file, May.”

They both turn to look at Ben, who just nods encouragingly. May still isn’t sure this isn’t a terrible plan, but she trusts Ben.

Peter sniffs, clearly still distraught, but pulls away from May to pick up the folder. The fastener winds up being too complicated for his small fingers, so May helps him unwind it, and then they slide a very official-looking paper out onto the table. When Peter frowns in confusion, Ben pulls up a chair beside him and helps him make his way through the document.

Peter carefully sounds out the names he recognizes, like _May Parker_ and _Peter Parker_ , and the ones he doesn’t quite know, like _Secretary of State_ (“She’s a very important person”) and _Benjamin Parker_ (“That’s Uncle Ben’s name, honey”), until he gets to the most important phrase:

 _Permanent legal custody_.

May watches as Peter’s brow furrows, then his mouth drops into an _Oh_.

Ben gives Peter a gentle smile. “The government says you’re ours, Peter. We couldn’t leave you even if we wanted to.”

“Which we don’t,” May’s quick to add. The tension on his face doesn’t leave. “Is… this okay?”

May’s hand finds Ben’s under the table while Peter thinks, unsure of what they’ll do if he says no.

Peter surprises her yet again.

“Does this mean I’m supposed to call you Mom now?”

His voice is flat, devoid of the exuberance it normally carries, and May can’t tell if he wants her to answer yes or no. She’s not even sure how _she_ feels about it. Technically he could, but…

 _Thirty-six, thirty-eight_.

Fortunately, Ben picks up the conversation for her. “Is that what you want, Peter?”

Peter bites his lip and looks down. Safe in the view of his shoelaces, he shakes his head.

 _No_.

“Then you don’t have to,” Ben says, and May nearly sighs in relief. Ben’s always been so good at making big things feel simple.

Except Peter doesn’t look up, and an uneasy sensation crawls up the back of May’s spine. “Find a new species on your lace tips, buddy?”

“Aglets.”

May’s fairly used to Peter’s seemingly endless amount of trivia—it took her months, for example, to discover _boobies_ were apparently a kind of blue-footed bird—but he still throws her off balance every now and then. “What?”

“The tips of shoelaces are called aglets,” Peter says, his voice muffled, “so everyone knows what they are.”

May and Ben glance at each other, and then a sniffle echoes through the apartment.

“But I don’t know what _you_ are.”

Before either May or Ben can interrupt, fat, salty tears drip down Peter’s cheeks, and then the fears he’s been holding back pour out, too. He explains how he was going to make a card for Aunt May, but Edward said that meant he must not want his _real_ mother any more, and how Mother’s Day isn’t meant for aunts, anyway. Of how Edward said he hadn’t ever heard of an Aunt sticking around for long, and how he only sees his own Aunts maybe twice a year, so one day Aunt May’ll just get bored of him and leave him alone, and he doesn’t _want_ to be alone but he doesn’t want to replace Mom, and—and—

Peter’s monologue is cut short as both May and Ben smother his panicked words with a hug.

“We are _not_ leaving you,” May says fiercely, deciding she dislikes this Edward person very, _very_ much. “I promised you forever, remember?”

“We’re family, Peter,” Ben adds. “ _Family_. That’s the important word, no matter what anyone says.”

May slides into the chair, one arm still wrapped around his shoulder, and makes sure he’s paying attention to her next words. “I would never want to replace Mary, honey. Your mom—she was really, really special. You don’t have to give me things or celebrate holidays or call me Mom or—or whatever. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I just want to be here for you.”

Peter’s chin is still wobbling, and May pauses as she tries to figure out how to give a five-year-old a sense of permanence. Her eyes glance over to the document, suddenly she knows exactly how to help Peter.

“…So it’s also okay if you don’t want to call me Aunt,” May says, watching his expression. She taps the document with one finger. “It doesn’t say Aunt on here—or Mom, or Uncle. Just May, because you’re right: titles can change. But I’m _me_ , no matter what. So you can call me just May, if you want.”

Peter’s brows knit together, trying to determine how he feels about this new idea. He looks from May, to the document, then back to May again.

“Just May?” he asks.

“Yeah,” May says, and it feels exactly right. “Just May and just Peter, and just Ben, too.”

Peter picks at his shoelaces, then nods once, decisively. “Okay, May.” He pauses. “But what do I do for the school project?”

May brushes his hair gently out of his face, and smiles. “I think I have an idea for that, too.”

* * *

On the Friday before Mother’s Day, Peter doesn’t go to school.

Instead, May takes the day off work, and lets Peter wake up whenever he wants to. They try (and fail) to bake chocolate chip pancakes, but it’s all right—they both eat enough of the chips to tide them over until lunch.

They watch Peter’s favorite Disney movie and play with his train set, and then they go to the bodega down the street to get a meatball sub for May, and a number five squished down flat for Peter. Finally, when Peter is ready, they carefully roll up Peter’s Mother’s Day card and place it in a bottle, and take the train to the stop by 69th and Metropolitan Ave.

They walk to the imposing iron gates surrounding the public cemetery, and when Peter hesitates at the entrance, May moves forward to open it for him.

“Just follow me,” she says, giving his hand a squeeze. “…I know the area.”

They wind their way through headstones and flower arrangements and newly budding trees, until they reach the grave marked _Richard and Mary Parker_. From there, it’s a simple affair: Peter places the bottle carefully next to the stone, and they both stand in silence for a moment, lost in their respective memories.

May closes her eyes, letting the scent of the flowers fill her nostrils, and thanks Mary for everything she’s been given, and promises to look after him as best as she can. Mary was never one for sentiment, but May thinks she’ll be forgiven just this once.

Beside her, Peter shifts in place. “Can we go to the park, May?”

May’s startled by his request, but she nods anyway. “And ice cream after, I think.”

Peter lights up and talks about ice cream flavors the entire walk over, but when they make it to the playground, he grows more reticent. May starts to think something’s wrong, but then he pulls a letter out of his backpack—smaller than the one he’d left with his parents, but decorated with every bit as much gusto.

At first May thinks he must have forgotten to leave it at the cemetery, but then he’s pressing it into her hand.

“I know you didn’t ask for this, but I—I—” An embarrassed blush creeps up his neck, and he shrugs.

May’s stunned into silence, but hesitantly takes the note from him. He waits just long enough to make sure she’s going to open it, then rockets off the second she breaks the seal—a yellow smilie face—on the envelope.

May shakes her head, amused by his behavior, as she unfolds the paper. It’s been painstakingly decorated with flowers, records, and chocolates—the things Ben bought for her this past Valentine’s—and there’s a message written down the center in blocky, childish letters that must have taken Peter ages to look presentable.

> _Happy May’s Month of May!_
> 
> _You’re so cool one day wasn’t enough, so they had to give you all of them._
> 
> _Love you forever,_
> 
> _Just Peter Parker_

She reads it slowly once, then twice; the words blurring near the end each time. Then she folds it carefully away in her bag for safekeeping, right next to the copy of Peter’s adoption certificate.

 _Forever_.

May sits on one of the benches and looks around until she spots Peter, who seems to have made friends with a Filipino boy about his age, and she smiles.

They’re going to be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally composed for the fictober prompt, "I know you didn't ask for this."
> 
> In the commentary for _Homecoming,_ director Jon Watts notes that they decided to have May referred to simply as "May" because it makes her seem "younger" (which is why, in _Captain America: Civil War_ he calls her Aunt May instead—it hadn't been decided yet). It's a choice I've always found interesting, and since navigating what to call your adopted parental figure is a common struggle, I wanted to explore that here.
> 
> We'll get our first significant time skip in the next chapter, so strap in! :)
> 
> Thanks as always for reading; please come scream at me in the comments or on [tumblr](http://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/).


	4. the form of someone else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May’s barely been home ten minutes when Peter barges through the door, his backpack landing with a _thud_ on the kitchen table.
> 
> “What’s your favorite color? Never mind, wouldn’t count anyway. Can I fly to Wisconsin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [LuthienKenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienKenobi) for listening to all my ranting. ...So, so much ranting. :P

Peter is ten the first time an argument goes too far.

It’s not that they haven’t fought before, because they certainly have—May’s always been a bit of a firecracker, and Peter’s proving himself to be just as tenacious as his father—but they’re usually able to keep it civil, and barring that, at least quick. Ben’s the calmest of all of them, so he’s often responsible for ending disagreements before they can really go anywhere.

It’s no surprise, then, that the blowout occurs while Ben’s still at work.

May’s barely been home ten minutes when Peter barges through the door, his backpack landing with a _thud_ on the kitchen table.

“What’s your favorite color? Never mind, wouldn’t count anyway. Can I fly to Wisconsin?”

“Backpacks on the hook, Peter.” May doesn’t look up from the checkbook she’s trying to make sense of, though her blood pressure spikes at the thought of yet another school-related expense. “And your snack is in the kitchen.”

Peter tosses his bag at the coat rack, misses by a woeful distance, and finally trudges over to hang it in the designated area before going after his snack. Ben’s banned May from making anything that involves actual kitchen appliances, so today that means a plain peanut butter sandwich.

May rubs at her temples and tries to bring her attention back to the bills scattered in front of her. Money’s always been tight for the Parkers, and this period is no exception—there’s a notice that their rent’s going up next month (for the third time this year alone), and the winter’s been so brutally cold their electricity bill’s nearly doubled in size. While May and Ben try to support Peter’s passions as much as they can, the endowment Mary and Richard left has long since run out, and they can only afford so many expenses at once.

Peter skitters back to the table, casting a shadow over the negative balance on May’s spreadsheet. “Sooooo?”

May sighs and shifts towards the light, trying to figure out how many extra hours she can fit in next week. “Why on earth would you need to go to Wisconsin?”

“The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a really great biology program. College is super competitive so I gotta start looking at options early or I won’t be able to get in.”

May’s glasses slide down her nose as she finally looks up. She knows he’s brilliant, and Peter’s elementary school is always pushing them about his future prospects, but it’s usually reserved for things a little closer—like applying for high school science magnets, or entering science fairs with maddeningly exorbitant fees.

This is an entirely new level of paranoia.

“Peter,” she says at last. “You are _ten_.”

“Exactly!” Peter doesn’t seem to pick up on her exasperation. “So I’m already losing my chance!”

“Chances that slip another ten percent every time you speak with your mouth full.”

Peter scowls and swallows down store brand white bread and peanut butter. “It’s totally normal, I swear. I’d only have to miss a couple days of school, so—”

“Hold up.” May raises her hand, bringing Peter’s rant to a screeching halt. “This is something your teachers came up with, right?”

“…Um.” His eyes slide away from hers, nervous energy visible in his persistent shifting from foot to foot. “Not exactly—”

“Define _exactly—_ ”

“—but it’s totally normal! Kids these days have to work on college applications earlier and earlier!”

“ _Kids these days_?” May’s exasperation is quickly turning into annoyance. “Where did that even—did you read a WikiHow article?”

“ _No_ ,” Peter says, way too quickly for it to be true. “Listen, it’s really not as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be.”

“Seeing as that’s several hundred dollars, it’s pretty much the definition of a _big deal_ ,” May says. “We’re barely scraping by as it is and you’re talking about plane tickets, hotels, meals, renting a car—”

“I—”

“—and that’s not even counting the lost time!” The red numbers glare up from the checkbook, goading May on. “You still haven’t finished your makeup work from when you were out with the flu, and _I’m_ trying to find time for more shifts, not lose the ones I have—”

“No no no!” Peter’s eyes grow wide, arms raising defensively. “I’m the only one that has to go, you can stay here!”

May’s fingers cease their drumming on the kitchen table. After a moment, she takes her glasses all the way off, utter disbelief writ across her face as she realizes what Peter’s implying. “So let me get this straight. Not only are you planning to go all the way to Wisconsin, you thought I’d let you go _by yourself_?”

Peter flushes, but doesn’t back down. “You let me ride the train alone!”

“Yes! The train! The one that coexists in the same five-mile radius as me, not halfway across the country!”

Peter purses his lips, and May turns back to her notes in a huff, signaling the end of the conversation.

“…I mean it’d be less than half.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“The distance between New York and Wisconsin isn’t even a thousand miles,” Peter says, scowling at his feet. “So it’s more like a third of the country.”

“Yeah, okay. No argument that includes the phrase _a thousand miles_ is winning you any points, Peter.” She collects her papers and rises from the table. Finishing in her and Ben’s bedroom will be less distracting. “You asked me a question, and I told you: _no._ If you’re really that worried about college prep I’m sure we can set something up with your school counselor—”

Peter lunges in front of her, blocking the doorway and the remainder of her thought. “May, I _have_ to go!”

May’s patience snaps.

“No, you don’t! And even if you do, you can wait until you’re sixteen, or _maybe_ fifteen, like a normal person!”

“But I have to go now!” Peter’s voice rises to a shout, his own anger surging to the forefront. “I can’t—it’ll be too late by then!”

“Good! MIT’s a better school anyway!”

Rage flickers in Peter’s eyes. “You can’t stop me from going—”

“Actually, I can, and I just did. Now _move._ ”

May marches around her stock-still nephew, fully intending to walk away without another word, when Peter’s next sentence drives a knife through her lungs.

“ _You’re_ not _my mother._ ”

The world tilts off its axis and shakes beneath her feet, or possibly it’s just her that’s shaking. She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t reason. Maybe that’s why her voice turns to ice as she replies.

“Well, _I’m_ all you’ve got.”

Her words cut into Peter like the winter wind howling outside, freezing the anger in Peter’s face and then thawing into despair.

May’s brain restarts too late.

She opens her mouth to apologize, but nothing will come out—a feeling she wishes had occurred five seconds ago.

Peter swallows and balls his hands into fists. “Lucky me.”

“Peter, wait—!”

May finds her voice, but Peter’s all but diving into his room. He slams the door before May can get to it, and the sound of the lock twisting into place reaches her ears.

“Peter!” She rattles the doorknob—she technically has a key, but they only use it in emergencies. “Please, come on buddy, I didn’t mean it and I’m so sorry—”

“ _If you were sorry you’d let me go!_ ”

May’s temper flares back to life despite herself. “That’s not—why is this so important to you?!”

Silence greets May’s shout, and then she hears the clacking of keys on Peter’s cobbled together computer through the door.

“ _Fine_ ,” she mutters, pushing away from the handle and crossing her arms. The near crippling guilt from seconds ago gives way to a protective, self-righteous anger. He can figure out she was right on his own time.

Except he doesn’t.

Instead, for the rest of the afternoon nothing comes out of Peter’s room except for the occasional sound of his computer restarting—it’s made almost entirely out of parts from the dumpster, so it frequently overheats. For her part, May doesn’t try to go into Peter’s room, either—turns out she’s overheating as well.

She reclaims the kitchen table and pretends to be hard at work adding and subtracting figures, but when Ben finally gets home hours later, she still hasn’t finished the first week of sums. She takes her glasses off and places her head in her arms as he walks over.

“Long day?” Ben hangs his keys and jacket neatly on their respective hooks without being told, because at least one of them is responsible.

May shrugs. She doesn’t really want to get into it again—ignoring the problem until it goes away is her favorite method of closure—but Ben’s always been good at getting to the heart of things. She lifts her head and leans back in the chair. “Peter and I had an argument.”

“About?”

Hell if she knows. “Wisconsin.”

“Mm.” Ben settles into the chair beside her. “Bad?”

May remembers the sickening feeling of rejection in her chest, reflected on Peter’s face. “…Yeah.”

Ben nods slowly, and May tenses under his gaze. “Probably not really about Wisconsin, then.”

She knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, but that didn’t make it feel any less obnoxious. “ _You_ try telling him that.”

Ben raises his eyebrows and her fire dims.

“I know, I know,” May says, toying with her pen. “But it’s what he was arguing about; what else was I supposed to do?”

Ben takes his glasses off and polishes them with the edge of his shirt—first one lens, then the other. When he’s finished, he slides them back on and clears his throat. “You still have that whiteboard around here somewhere? From Peter’s math homework?”

“Uh. I think?” May wonders if her husband’s been struck by the non sequitur bug, too. “It’d be in the closet if we haven’t thrown it away. Bottom shelf.”

“All right.” Ben stands, clapping his hand against his thigh, and makes his way over to the closet. “Peter!”

Ben’s bellow is firm, but not angry, and the clacking sounds from Peter’s room stop instantaneously. May finally gives up on the finances and sets the pile to the side, and Peter’s door creaks open just as Ben returns to the table with the whiteboard. Peter looks just as somber as when May last saw him, but the stiffness in his gait suggests he’s nowhere near ready to give up on his quest. His gaze slips straight past May and lands on Ben as he hovers at the threshold.

“Hi, Ben.”

“Hi, Peter.” Ben picks up May’s pen from the table. “Come join us.”

Peter slinks over and pulls out a chair. It doesn’t escape May’s notice that he sits on the opposite side of the table, placing as much distance between them as possible.

“So here’s what we’re going to do,” Ben says, drawing a dividing line in permanent ink down the center of the board. He then writes _Peter_ on the left side of the line, and _Adult_ on the other. “We’re going to make a kind of pros and cons list here. Every time one of you makes a point, you get a tally mark on your side. The person with the most marks at the end wins—ties go to Adult.”

“Ben!” May gapes at her husband in horror, while Peter lights up like a Christmas tree. “We can’t—”

“We can,” Ben says, capping her pen and switching to the dry erase marker. “Trust me.”

May scowls, because they really, _really_ can’t. But if Ben says so…

Whatever. She can win, anyway.

“It’s too expensive, and Peter can’t go by himself.”

Peter sits up, ramrod straight. “I got a whole ten dollars from Mr. Delmar yesterday. And official US rules state that anyone over the age of eight can fly unattended!”

May glares at Peter. So _that’s_ what he’s been googling all this time. “Ten dollars isn’t anywhere near—”

“We’ll mark that down as ‘Peter can help pay,’” Ben says, drawing two tally marks on each of their sides. “Remember that neither of you can use those arguments again, or anything related.”

Peter quickly rattles off several more points, each more nonsensical than the previous in May’s opinion. She tries to signal to Ben that this is insane—logically, none of Peter’s reasons should hold as much weight as May’s—but Ben just dutifully records each one. As the board fills up, each tally of Peter’s answered by one of May’s, Peter’s rapid-fire answers begin to fade into desperation, and May grows more and more confident. By the time Peter runs out of steam, he has thirteen marks.

May has fourteen.

His eyes shoot back and forth between May and the board, the _not about Wisconsin_ fear evident in his eyes. “…Ned’s already visited two colleges?”

“Yes, I’m aware,” May says. That’s because Ned has two siblings in college, both of which are _in state_. But she’s feeling generous. “Your point.”

Ben draws another line to make it fourteen-fourteen. May smirks.

It’s not enough.

Peter is dead silent, mouth opening and closing as he tries to formulate another response. Slowly, any sense of victory May felt fades away: Peter’s eyes are shimmering in the kitchen lights.

“I—” Peter swallows, hands opening and closing and coming up empty. “But I can’t wait. I can’t wait, Ben—May, it’ll be _too late_.”

Ben locks eyes with May, and then sets the board aside. “Too late for what, Peter?”

Peter shakes his head, roughly brushing a hand across his eyes. Now that they’re near the heart of whatever Peter’s problem is, May decides it’s time to leave her seat for the one next to him.

“I—I—”

He slips out of his chair and runs to his room, and May thinks maybe moving closer wasn’t the best move after all. Before she can say anything, Peter comes hurtling back with a single piece of printer paper held tightly in his grasp. He offers it to May without a word.

The UW-Madison logo is printed in black and white across the header, like Peter had printed a screen grab of a webpage, and below that is the citation information and abstract for a scientific paper: “Reactivation of Latent Working Memories with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation,” by Olivia Gloss and Nathan Rosin.

May frowns, confused as to why Peter would be worried about his memory—he’s at the top of his class in every subject—and only half understanding the rest of the words. “Peter, what—”

“I don’t know Mom’s favorite color.”

May’s gaze shoots up to meet Ben’s, but he looks just as lost as she feels. “Peter, if you wanted to know about Mary—”

“It wouldn’t have counted that way,” Peter interrupts, still fighting back tears. “Like—if you google someone’s favorite color it’s just a fact you know, it’s not a memory. They didn’t _tell_ you. I have to remember on my own or it won’t—I won’t—” He gives up on his war against his tears. “If I forget, I won’t have them anymore.”

May sucks in a deep breath, because Ben was right.

It’s never been about Wisconsin.

May rises quietly from her chair and fixes three slightly scalded mugs of hot cocoa while Peter tearfully explains his recent obsession. Apparently, his history class had been discussing religious systems for the past week, and this morning they’d gone over the ancient Egyptian view of death: people only exist in the afterlife as long as they’re remembered. So if Peter’s forgetting his parents…

Ben pulls Peter into a half hug while May takes the cocoa off the burner. “I don’t think most people think that way anymore, buddy.”

“But Mrs. Dara says they’re alive in my memories, too!” Mrs. Dara, their next-door neighbor, is constantly supplying unasked-for opinions. “Why can I remember that but not—not Mom’s favorite food? Or Dad’s favorite song? Mom’s _laugh_? Or—or—”

“Peter.”

Ben and Peter both turn towards her at the sound of her voice. May holds one of the mugs thoughtfully in her hand, the other two balanced precariously in the other. She catches Ben’s eye and nods at him: she’s got this.

May walks back to the table and carefully, wary of the liquid sloshing inside, sets the first mug down in front of Peter. Then she sits herself down beside him. May wraps her fingers around the warmth of her mug and closes her eyes as she untangles her thoughts.

“Do you remember when you got a gift certificate at the science fair?”

The randomness of May’s question throws Peter off balance. “…No?”

A soft smile touches May’s lips as she opens her eyes. “It was three years ago, so that makes sense—but I remember. You used it to buy that mug you’re drinking out of.”

Peter peers at the mug with renewed interest, lifting it to eye level—it has a picture of a boiling pot on it, and the caption _RIP Water: You Will Be Mist_.

May picks her own mug off of the table and takes a sip. “So, how do you know you had a gift certificate?”

“Because… you said so? And I have the mug right here?”

“Mm-hm. So you have proof because someone remembered, and proof because of what you have,” May says. “And I know you think it doesn’t count, but I remember your parents—and so does Ben. Very, very, well. I may not know anything about magnetic stimulation or electric pulses… but I do know what your mother’s laugh sounded like.”

Peter shakes his head, fingers tightening around his mug. “But _I_ don’t. And—and google said memories get worse over time. How do you know _your_ memory isn’t wrong?”

May thinks of long nights with Mary, drinking beer and talking about the future. Watching dumb cartoons on the television while Richard and Ben talk shop. Running away in back alleys after one too many dumpster dives.

Mary’s laugh is in all of these, as bright and vibrant as the day they happened, but none are the laugh she’s thinking of.

“Because,” May says, setting down her cocoa and running a hand through Peter’s disheveled hair, “I hear it every time _you_ laugh.”

Peter’s eyes grow wide as the mug in his hands, and May can’t help but smile.

“It’s the little snort you make before you commit,” May says, tapping his nose with her finger. “Or when you can’t stop grinning, and start clapping your hands because there’s just so _much_ you have to let out. Laughter so strong it leaves you practically doubled over, gasping for breath and infecting everyone around you, too. …It’s the most Mary Parker thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You have your father’s smile, too.” Ben traces circles around the rim of his mug. “Especially when you solve a problem. Or that nose scrunch when you see something you don’t like, but you’re too polite to say anything.”

Peter holds his mug reverently, digesting their words. “Are you _sure_?”

“Certain as the sun,” Ben says.

“And my memories?”

“Memory isn’t just what you know, Peter,” May says. “Sometimes it’s what you do. How you act, what you believe. And those are marks that never leave, even when we don’t know where they came from.”

May slides off her chair and looks up at Peter, one hand cupped around his knee to make sure he’s hearing her. “Your parents are a part of you that no amount of forgetfulness can take away, because you will always have _you_.”

Peter’s quiet for a long moment, but he doesn’t jerk away from her touch.

“So. No Wisconsin?” he says, finally.

May smiles. “No. No Wisconsin.”

“…Okay.”

Ben rises from the table and puts the whiteboard back in the closet, tally marks gone but the format intact for the next time, and May and Peter finish their cocoa. When Peter’s eyes start watering, this time it’s only from the steam.

“Hey, May?”

May glances up from her mug as Ben sits next to her. “Yeah, Tiger?”

Peter fiddles briefly with the handle on his cup before he finds his courage. “…What’s Mom’s favorite color?”

“Green.”

Peter’s mouth falls open, eyes agape. “But that’s _my_ favorite color!”

Richard’s eyes flash in May’s memory, their bright green color vibrant next to Mary’s brown. May smiles and leans into her husband’s embrace. “Sure is.”

Peter giggles, a little snort and then an ear-to-ear grin, and starts peppering her with questions while Ben goes to order a pizza—and maybe drag out the photo album, too. May just smiles and pulls her mug closer to her chest, the sound of Peter’s voice washing over her.

She’s always loved hearing Mary’s laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the first (and in theory only) section I've completely rewritten, but it did manage to keep the original fictober prompt: "Yes, I'm aware. Your point?"
> 
> As to a few details in the chapter: the ancient Egyptian understanding of death is a little more complicated than what Peter says, but the general idea of the importance of memory was present, so an elementary school can be forgiven for simplifying things a little bit. The study Peter references is also real (names changed a little bc I expect Google shouldn't be archiving my fic next to their LinkedIn profiles), but Peter misunderstood its extent: it can only be applied to short term memories, not ones stored in long term. 
> 
> Finally, the chapter title came from Thutmose's _Memories._
> 
> Thanks as always for reading; please do drop by in either the comments or my [tumblr](http://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/). <3


	5. what will be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It feels like May’s walking in a haze as she follows the officer through the precinct: every step echoes just slightly wrong; faces blur in and out; the hallway is simultaneously miles long and inches across.
> 
>  _None of this is real,_ her mind whispers. _Peter is home and Ben is safe and she is—_
> 
> She is standing over the body of her husband, as cold and lifeless as the tea leaves lying in their sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the summary & tags suggest, we've reached the Parkers' darkest moment—but I promise there's light at the end. <3
> 
> Thanks to [LuthienKenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienKenobi/pseuds/LuthienKenobi) for her continued insight & encouragement.

Peter is four.

No—Peter is fourteen.

But Peter is four, because there’s no world in which May should have to drive to a police station, fear lancing through her heart, twice in one lifetime.

Rain pours down in sheets, turning the streets slick and ominous like it did _that_ night. Despite the torrents outside, inside it’s completely silent: she doesn’t cry because none of this is real, and no one cries in the empty seat beside her because Ben was—because Ben is—

May’s fingers cramp horribly around the steering wheel. She drives faster.

It’s wrong, it’s so wrong, but she can’t help but feel _angry_. Not even at whoever did this, but because Ben shouldn’t have been out tonight at all. Peter’d tried sneaking out after dinner—for the third time this week—but Ben had caught him before he’d made it through the door. He’d offered to take Peter on a walk while May finished the dishes, promising they’d be back shortly.

They weren’t.

Instead, she’d been drinking tea when the call came through: some kind of fancy, loose-leaf Earl Grey mix Ben had steeped hours ago. It’s sitting abandoned on their kitchen table now, getting colder by the second.

( _Mary is thirty-six and thirty-six, and Richard is thirty-eight and thirty-eight, and Ben is fifty-one and—_ )

May double parks next to the one hundred and seventh precinct, limbs trembling as she locks Ben’scar. She hovers in front of the entrance, remembering the last time she was here.

_You and me, okay? No matter what._

May steps through the doorway alone.

The precinct is just as frantic and overwhelming as she remembers: the harsh lighting, the cacophony of voices, the flurry of useless activity. There’s no one beside her this time, and the loneliness of it all roots her feet to the floor.

Ben is _fifty-one_ , and _god, please,_ how can there not be a fifty-two?

“Mrs. Parker? Ma’am?”

May turns and sees a pair of officers staring at her, the younger one fidgeting with his radio. It’s the most horrifying sense of déjà vu she’s ever experienced, and she finds herself distracted by the taste of lavender and orange zest still lingering on her tongue.

The officer clears his throat, and the precinct snaps back into focus.

“Are you here for—”

“Where is he,” she rasps. The words are so nauseatingly familiar she doesn’t know herself which one she’s asking for. “I need—they were—”

The officers exchange glances that make her want to scream.

“Your son’s in the back getting changed,” the first one says. “The stains were—we had to dispose of his old ones. You can see him once he’s ready.”

She doesn’t correct the officer’s error, too busy remaining upright to care about the intricacies of parental guardianship. Peter’s been alone all this time, and she knows she should fight to see him as quickly as possible, knows he doesn’t have any business being by himself, not here, but—

But Ben’s alone, too.

“I want to see him,” she decides, hating how her voice cracks. “Please. I want to see my husband.”

The older officer just puts out a placating hand. “We’ve already had more than enough to ID the body, ma’am. You should wait until we’re done processing—”

 _“I want. To see him. Now_.”

By all rights her five-five frame shouldn’t be intimidating, but the officer backs down, and May’s fire dies with his concession. He gestures for her to follow.

It feels like she’s walking in a haze as she follows him through the precinct: every step echoes just slightly wrong; faces blur in and out; the hallway is simultaneously miles long and inches across.

 _None of this is real_ , her mind whispers. _Peter is home and Ben is safe and she is—_

She is standing over the body of her husband, as cold and lifeless as the tea leaves lying in their sink.

May’s hand covers her mouth, but it does nothing to stop the sob that escapes her chest.

She blinks and she’s kneeling over a toilet, cold tile leaching the warmth from her body until it matches Ben’s. The stall door is locked: no one is around.

May buries her head in her hands and cries, and cries, and cries, because no one can see her break.

Ben is not fifty-one.

Ben is _gone_.

She can’t remember her last words to him. Did she tell him that she loved him? Or just ask if he could pick up the milk? Did he think of her—did he have as many regrets as she does? Or did he save his last words for Peter?

_Why didn’t she go with them?_

She’s interrupted by a sharp knock on the door.

“Ma’am? Peter’s ready to see you now.”

_Oh, god._

She can’t fall apart. Not now; not when Ben’s not here to—Peter’s here. She _has_ to be strong.

(Except she doesn’t know how to be strong when all she wants to do is burn with rage or drown in grief, doesn’t know how to live in a world that doesn’t have Ben in it, doesn’t know how to raise a lonely teenager all by herself.)

But there’s no one else left.

May scrubs away her ruined mascara and splashes the coldest water she can stand across her face, forcing her fear back into the hollow of her chest.

_Do what’s in front of you; worry about the rest later._

Her back is ramrod straight when she exits the bathroom. The officer leads her down another winding corridor to the room Peter’s been told to wait in, and when the door opens, Peter is so unmistakably _fourteen_ it banishes the last hope that all this is just a dream.

There’s an orange shock blanket just like before, but it’s laying discarded on a chair instead of draped around her nephew’s shoulders. Peter himself is pacing furious circles across the room, one hand wrapped up in his hair and the other clenched around a crumpled piece of paper. He’s so agitated he doesn’t even notice May standing in the doorway.

She sees every inch of him, though, and it’s red, red, red.

Red-rimmed eyes set against his flushed red cheeks. Red hands that look raw and inflamed, like he’d been scrubbing at them for hours, and red flecks underneath his nails from where the scrubbing wasn’t enough. Red, red rage in the coiled tension of his posture.

May’s only just got a handle on her own anger; she doesn’t think she can handle his.

“Peter,” she says.

He freezes, growing as rigid as Ben’s body. It takes a moment for his eyes to focus, but when they do, they stare over her shoulder. “Did they get him?”

May glances behind her; the officer’s already left. “Get…?”

“The guy who—I gave them my statement.” The muscles in Peter’s jaw jump with tension. “They should have had him by now. Why—is he here?”

_Oh._

May honestly hasn’t given Ben’s murderer any thought at all. From the look in Peter’s eyes, that’s all he’s thought about. She swallows and closes the door behind her. “I don’t think so, honey. They told me they were still looking. But Peter—”

“He can’t get away.” Peter drags his hand forcefully across his nose. “I should’ve—he was—”

Something cracks in his expression and his eyes finally meet hers. “I’m so sorry, May. I’m so, so sorry; I couldn’t—”

May closes the distance between them, tripping and falling across the floor until he’s wrapped tightly in her arms. He’s so much bigger at fourteen than he was at four, and her shoulders don’t feel nearly strong enough to carry the weight of their grief.

“I’ll fix this,” he says, face buried in her neck—though he doesn’t return her embrace. “They’ll get him. I just have to—I have to—”

“Peter, honey.”

He pulls away, paper crinkling in his fist. His eyes are bright and desperate, but she can’t find any words of comfort to offer: no flashes of inspiration, no token from Ben to make things right.

She blinks back tears. “There’s nothing we can do.”

It’s the worst thing she’s ever had to say, and Peter stumbles back under the force of it.

He shakes his head and reaches blindly for the doorknob. “There _has_ to be.”

She knows she should stop him, but she’s so afraid to start a fight: not when Ben isn’t here to fix it, not when her own emotions feel so out of control.

She lets him go.

In retrospect, it makes dealing with the death of Peter’s parents feel so easy. As soon as she got to Peter, all she had to do was hold on tight, and somehow everything else fell into place.

This time she got to Peter, and everything else just feels worse.

She walks over to the mountain of paperwork left for her on the desk, and picks up a pen: the words floating in her mind translate into ink.

Benjamin Parker is fifty-one.

Peter Parker is fourteen.

And May Parker is a widow.

* * *

As it turns out, Peter Parker is a lot of things: but primarily, Peter Parker is late.

More specifically, it is _fifteen goddamn minutes_ untilBen’s funeral, and May is waiting in the backroom _alone_.

She doesn’t know if she should scream or cry.

Against her better judgement, she’d agreed to let Peter spend the night with Ned—as long as he got to the funeral home, in his suit, an hour before the service was supposed to start. That deadline flew by, but at least May got a text saying it’d be closer to the half hour mark.

Then that time passed, too, and _without_ a reason.

May chews through her fourth fingernail in a row, a habit she’d kicked back in eighth grade, and pages through text messages to keep from pulling up police bulletins.

Peter’s fine. He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s—

“Sorry I’m late!”

May nearly drops her phone when Peter launches himself into the room, coattails flying and hair slicked back with sweat instead of hair gel.

Peter is _in so much trouble_.

“Where the hell have you been?” May drives her fingers into his hair in what’s definitely just an attempt to fix it, and not motivated at all by the fact that she needs to know he’s okay.

“I just got caught up in some stuff, I’m sorry. I made it though, right?”

“You can’t _do_ this Peter, not when—” May pauses, inspecting a three-inch stain on his sleeve. “How did you get this? God, Peter, we’re only renting it, you can’t just—”

He yanks his arm away. “I had to run past a construction site and I tripped, that’s all. It’s really not as bad as it looks.”

He’s definitely lying, just like he dodged her question about why he was late. May steeples her hands in front of her nose and breathes out slowly. By the time she reaches the count of ten, all the fight has bled out of her.

“Just don’t do this again, Peter—not without telling me.” She glances at the doors they’re about to walk through. “Please.”

Peter has the decency to look guilty. “Yes, May.”

“Okay.” May gives his shoulder a squeeze as the funeral director waves them forward: it’s time.

Although the first few hours after Ben’s death seem fixed in her brain, ever since then May’s life has formed in fragments: a needle skipping from one point to the next, leaving entire sections left unplayed.

Today is no different.

She and Peter walk into the service and sit down, and then just as quickly it’s over, and then they’re halfway through the receiving line, shaking hands with all the well-wishers. She blinks and remembers to maintain her forced smile, and tells Mrs. Dara—who seems more interested in being consoled than consoling—that _no, really, they’ll be okay._

She’s saved when one of Peter’s classmates—Michelle, May thinks—elbows her way to the front.

“They got him.”

Peter, who was speaking with someone beside May, freezes mid sentence. Michelle stares at them with a gaze that’s somehow both very nervous and very confident.

“The mugger,” she clarifies. “He got dropped off at the precinct an hour ago with a note—there’s some new vigilante working the area.”

The people within hearing distance murmur their approval, and May sags with a kind of vindictive relief. The knowledge that he won’t get away is nice, but knowing how much it meant to Peter makes it so much better. Maybe he’ll be able to grieve normally now. “Thank—”

“Fat lot of good that’ll do.” Mrs. Dara’s acerbic voice overpowers May’s, yanking away her train of thought. “Those vigilante types always mess up the evidence. I’ll bet you that asshole’ll get off scot-free ’cause he interfered.”

Peter breathes in sharply beside her, and May feels her own stomach drop at the thought. Michelle is quick to intervene.

“Peter can ID the guy,” she snaps. “And besides that, he still had the gun on him. As long as the prints match there’s no way he won’t get convicted.”

It’s a strong argument, but Mrs. Dara has never been fond of letting someone else have the last word.

“The fact remains,” she says, “if this vigilante really wanted to help, he should have stopped it from happening in the first place. All these lawbreakers think they can join the clean-up crew and count that as heroism.”

Peter looks like he’s going to be sick. “I need to go.”

 _Go?_ _In the middle of all this?_

“It can wait, honey.” She reaches for his shoulder, but he breaks her hold like it isn’t even there.

“I’ll go to the station,” he says, faintly. “Make sure—I have to—”

He starts backing away and May’s temper flares.

_But she can’t turn it into fight—not when Ben’s not here to stop them._

Fear paralyzes May, worried they’ll say something they don’t mean, worried they’ll take it too far, just like they always do.

_Not here, not here, not here._

She says nothing, and Peter leaves for the second time.

May whirls on Mrs. Dara, fully intending to let loose on her since she’s too afraid to let loose on Peter, but their neighbor is already shuffling away as fast as she can. From the way Michelle glares after her, she probably has something to do with that.

Michelle notices May’s attention and wilts.

“I’m sorry,” she says, staring down at her feet. “I just thought—tell Peter I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” May conjures up a smile that’s at least more real than the one she had for Mrs. Dara. “Thank you.”

Michelle nods, then gives May a salute that’s awkward, but not mocking. She slips off to wherever she came from.

The rest of the crowd has the decency to disperse soon after, but it’s still a maddening half hour before May’s free to make her way back to the apartment.

Her phone buzzes: it’s Peter, letting her know he’s going to spend the night at Ned’s.

Again.

May texts Ned’s mom and then drops her phone into her purse. She wants Peter to be able to grieve in whatever way works best for him, but does it have to be one that doesn’t include her?

She takes the train the long way home because the normal route reminds her too much of Ben, but despite her best efforts, it’s still not enough: every stop name, every brown coat, every man with even the slightest hint of salt-and-pepper hair, feels like a knife to the eye. She gets off two stops early and buys a coffee she can’t afford, and avoids the eyes of every couple she passes.

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until she tastes the salt in her drink.

It’s just—the thing is, she was always supposed to be the first to go.

She was the oldest, after all. Not that much more than Ben, but certainly in comparison to Richard, or Mary. She shouldn’t have been the last one standing. Not when she’s the one least qualified to deal with everything left behind.

God, what is she going to do about Peter?

In a snap decision, May resolves that the second she gets home she’s going to go through an entire pack of beer—possibly two, if she’s still coherent at the end of the first one. She’s also going to pull up every single home video they have, which is a decent amount thanks to Peter, and bawl her eyes out while curled up in one of Ben’s old sweaters.

If she’s going to be alone, she might as well make the most of it.

This plan consoles her all the way through the final block to her apartment, and then falls apart the second she unlocks the door and nearly slams it into Peter’s face.

She’s not sure who’s more surprised: herself, or Peter.

“May!” The garish bags under his eyes add to the horror in his expression. “What’re you—what’re you doing here?”

The question startles her, made even more strange by the way he keeps eying the open door. She’s so tired of whatever _this_ is.

She hangs her purse next to the empty hook where Ben’s keys should be. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t be here, Peter?”

“No.”

Rushed, clipped response; fingers clenched around his backpack’s straps. _Lie._

May nudges the door shut with the toe of her boot, and the click of the latch echoes through the empty space between them. “You went to the police department?”

“Not really.” A shame May can’t fathom floods Peter’s cheeks. “They wouldn’t let me see him yet.”

Privately, May thinks that’s excellent news. She doesn’t want to go anywhere near the man responsible for taking her husband away, and can’t imagine it’s healthy for Peter, either. Especially since he’s still trying to edge his way around to the door, seemingly nothing but anxious to get away from her.

“I was thinking I’d watch our old videos,” she blurts out. “You know that computer hates me—think you can stick around long enough to help me with it?”

“I—” Peter looks very, _very_ nervous, but now that there’s another option, May can’t stand the thought of spending another night alone.

“Come on,” she says. “We could make a night of it, or—or we could watch Star Trek. There’s even some popcorn in the cabinet that I…” May’s voice peters out. “…That I rarely burn.”

“I, uh.” Peter’s practically vibrating on the balls of his feet. “I already told Ned that I’d be at his house, so. I should probably… probably go.”

“You were just there _last night_ , Peter,” May says, already reaching for her phone. “I’m sure he’ll understand if you tell him—”

May cuts off, staring at the text message from Mrs. Leeds that’s popped up on her lock screen.

> _Funeral was the first time I’ve seen Peter all week. He okay?_

May’s hand lowers slowly to her side. She takes a long look at Peter: the hoodie pulled up over his head, the backpack fit to burst, the slight scarring across his knuckles.

“Peter,” she says, angling her body more directly between her nephew and the door, “where are you going?”

He laughs, a nervous sound punctuated by the way his eyes dart back and forth, looking for an escape.

It does _not_ sound like Mary.

“Ned’s,” he says. “I just—I just told you that.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “And Mrs. Leeds just told me that you’re definitely _not._ ”

Peter was red that night at the precinct. Right now, he’s nothing but ghostly white.

“I, um. I just really need to go—”

“Oh yeah? Got some kind of hot date, Parker?”

“What? No!”

“Then _what_?”

Both of their voices escalate in volume, but after May’s last question, Peter just drags his hands over his face. “This is exactly why you weren’t supposed to be here.”

May doesn’t know how to take that. “Here as in—what, the apartment? You’re so desperate to get away from me I can’t even be in my own home?”

“That’s not—”

“Who do you think _pays_ for all this now?”

“ _That’s the problem!_ ” Peter’s shout echoes through the room, his jerking movements knocking his hoodie back in the process. May sucks in a breath when she sees the already-fading bruise beneath his hairline. “Or just… one of them.”

May’s felt a lot of things over the past week: shock, horror, anger, sorrow. And if grief felt like having all the air sucked from her lungs, then the dread she’s feeling now is like giving it no way to escape.

“The problem with what, Peter?”

He’s silent for a long moment. “…I’m leaving.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that.”

“No, like.” Peter shakes his head, and the tears in his eyes threaten to spill over. “I’m _leaving,_ leaving.”

 _No._ No, no, no, this isn’t happening, he can’t mean—

“Forever.”

“ _Peter_ ,” she gasps, then all the air runs out.

A miserable smile appears on his face and he slips around her, getting closer and closer to the door. “It’s okay, May. Really. You don’t have to—you don’t have to worry about me.”

He’s going to leave her. He’s going to leave her again and Ben isn’t here to stop them or make things better or tell her what she’s missing because _Ben is not here_ —

She is.

May’s hand darts out and grabs Peter by the wrist, because she’s let him go twice now and she’ll be _damned_ if she lets him go a third time. “Peter Benjamin Parker, if you so much as step _one foot_ out that door, you are _grounded_ for life.”

Peter breaks her hold easily— _when did he get so strong?_ —but at least he hesitates. “May—no. I thought this through, I swear.”

“Clearly not enough,” she snaps. “Ben would never want—”

“Ben is why I have to leave!” Peter shouts, his voice cracking around Ben’s name. “I—I don’t deserve to be around you. Or anyone.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I—he—” Peter breaks off with a loud sniff. He reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper.

May takes it from his outstretched hand: it’s printer paper, with the NYPD watermark stamped across it—she vaguely remembers seeing him with something similar in the back room that night. As she unfolds it, she sees a black dividing line drawn straight down the center, and red, blue, and purple tally marks fill the left side, nearly two-thirds of the way down. The right side is completely blank.

_It’s never about Wisconsin._

“Peter,” May says, wanting to hold him but scared he’ll bolt if she does, “Peter, it wasn’t your fault.”

But Peter’s not listening. “I could’ve stopped him, May. _I could have_ , and I just—I just let it happen all over again. I killed my parents and I killed Ben and I can’t stop thinking about how I’m going to get you killed, too, and _I could’ve stopped it this time_ —”

May throws caution to the wind and grabs him by the shoulders. “Peter, look at me. _He had a gun_. Okay? I don’t care if you’re four or fourteen or whatever bullshit reason you’ve come up with, there was nothing you could have done to—”

“ _You don’t know that!_ ”

The apartment cracks with the sound of his shout, and Peter breaks her hold on him. He stands there, trembling, and at that all of the rage and grief that May’s been holding inside breaks, too. She can’t be Ben—Ben was calm and rational and careful, and she is fire and passion and recklessness.

But maybe that can work, too.

“Okay,” she says. “You know what? You’re right. I _don’t_ know that.”

Peter’s face crumbles, but May’s not done. Paper still in hand, she storms past him and starts rifling through the living room, tossing pillows off furniture and overturning magazines, until at last she finds what she’s looking for: Ben’s green ink pen.

She snatches it up and walks over to the kitchen table, uncapping it as she slams the paper down.

“All right, let’s try this again, shall we?” She starts drawing lines underneath the ones Peter already made. “First off, there’s the lying. _Constantly_ , and for god knows why. You’re late for everything, no matter how many times I tell you or how important it is, and even when you do show up, you somehow manage to vanish halfway through anyway. You are snappish and irresponsible, you keep breaking shit that I can’t afford to fix, and your parents—”

Her throat tightens.

“Your parents died in front of you. So did your uncle, and you didn’t stop it.” Hot, salty tears land on the page, blurring the ink. She doesn’t know if they’re hers or Peter’s. “And maybe— _maybe_ if you hadn’t been sneaking out, if Ben hadn’t had to go after you, you wouldn’t have needed to stop it in the first place. So for the sake of argument, maybe it is all your fault.”

She finishes writing with an aggressive swipe, green tally marks littering the page for every damning thing she’s said. Peter’s jaw is clenched so tightly May can hear his teeth grinding together, but it doesn’t stop his tears from falling.

“And you know what, Peter?”

He jerks his head, unable to respond.

“ _I don’t care._ ”

The paper rips clean in two under her hands.

Peter watches her, stunned, as she crumples the marked side under her fist, leaving only the right side intact.

He shakes his head, eyes bright against his pale skin. “You don’t understand, you can’t— _I_ can’t—I messed up _so bad,_ May—”

“No. You listen to me, remember? _Me._ ” May holds up the remaining, unblemished piece of paper. “You see this? There are zero reasons written here, Peter. Zero. You could have a million reasons on the other side and it still wouldn’t matter.”

Peter’s still shaking his head, back up against the wall with snot and tears running down his face. “But—but if Ben’s gone you’re not even really my aunt, you can—”

“Who am I?”

The question halts Peter’s rambling. “…May?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just May. And god knows I didn’t mean it literally at the time, but that’s still what I promised you: I’m not here to be your mom, or your uncle, or even your aunt. _I’m here to be May_. And that means _nothing_ can change this relationship.”

He shakes his head, still not ready to believe. “But… _why_?”

“Why?”

May stares at him: this boy of Mary and Richard and Ben. This boy who’s lived in her home for a decade now. This boy that she’s taken to school and to museums and to doctors’ appointments and to parties. This boy that’s turned into her whole entire world.

“BecauseI love you, Peter,” she says. “ _I love you_. And I have loved you since the day Mary walked you through that door, when you hadn’t done _anything_ to deserve my love.”

She sets the paper down, and when Peter doesn’t move, she reaches out and wipes the tears off his cheek with her thumb. “So tell me. What could you _possibly_ do to lose a love you already didn’t deserve?”

The kitchen falls dead silent.

A thousand emotions flicker across Peter’s face, too fast for her to keep track. She’s not strong enough to stop him physically if he decides to go: every single card she has, she’s played. She has to hope it’s enough.

His mouth opens, then closes. His eyes go to the door.

Peter breaks.

His backpack crashes to the floor first and then he crashes into her, hugging her and sobbing into her shoulder like he hasn’t in years. She hugs him back, clutching just as tight, and every _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ from him is met with _I know, I love you_ from her _._

“I don’t want to lose you,” he says.

“Then don’t make me lose _you_ ,” she replies, resting her head against his. “We’ve both lost more than enough.”

Peter nods and they rock back and forth under the kitchen lights, and when May doesn’t feel Ben’s arms coming to join them, she cries, too.

She knows they won’t be okay for a long time: knows that Peter’s still hiding something, knows that the grieving process has only just begun.

But she doesn’t let go, so that one day, they will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A deeply personal chapter—thanks for reading. <3
> 
> Please do drop by in either the comments or on my [tumblr](http://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/); your words always bring me great joy.


	6. you and me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May stares at the tickets: six a.m. departure, eleven p.m. return. No chance of visiting Ben’s grave.
> 
> Then again, what did it matter? She hasn’t gone on the anniversary for five years, a fact made abundantly clear by the abysmal conditions of the cemetery. Ben’s headstone hadn’t even escaped the abuse, as in a particularly cruel act of fate, she’d discovered a crack had formed straight down its center—dividing the names _Ben Parker_ and _May Parker_ one last time.
> 
> “Okay. Sure,” May says, before she can fully process what she’s agreeing to. “What’s one day, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [LuthienKenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienKenobi) for listening to me rant about this for two straight weeks; you're the real MVP. <3

May is fifty-five the day before Ben’s eighth anniversary.

It’s funny, because she was also fifty-five on his second anniversary. It’s not funny, because it’s a reminder that while Ben’s been dead for eight years, she’s mourned him for barely even a fourth of that.

It’s really, _really_ not funny, because from the look on her supervisor’s face, she won’t get to tomorrow, either.

“It’ll be such a good opportunity for your career,” she gushes, like that’s one of May’s primary concerns. “You already know most of the procedures and what our numbers are like, so as long as you go through my notes you won’t have a problem keeping up. All you have to do is listen to the speakers and say something pithy every now and then.”

May stares at the three-inch stack of papers that’s just been dropped onto her desk, the FEMA logo blazoned across the top. “I appreciate it, Shelly, but I—”

“I get. No one wants to lose a Saturday these days.” Shelly pauses, glancing around to make sure none of the other employees are in earshot, then leans in a little closer. “It’s just, Alex and I are still struggling, you know? We’re supposed to go apartment shopping tomorrow and if I have to cancel again—well, it’d be a bummer to get an RR with my own name on it.”

May winces. FEMA’s official policy is to pair Blipped individuals with their surviving family members, with the large shelters being reserved for those with nowhere else to go. Relocation Requests are still a daily occurrence, however, because a lot can change in five years, and reunions aren’t always so simple.

Case in point: Alex was blipped. Shelly wasn’t.

May sighs. “I’m really not sure I’m cut out for this.”

“ _Please_ , May,” Shelly repeats. “You’re the only one even remotely qualified here besides me. And it’s D.C.! Who doesn’t love going to D.C.?”

Everyone, especially now that flight plans are so hit-or-miss that the only reliable option is the train, which is a three and a half hour ride both ways. May stares at the tickets: six a.m. departure, eleven p.m. return. No chance of visiting Ben’s grave.

Then again, what did it matter? She hasn’t gone on the anniversary for _five years_ , a fact made abundantly clear by the abysmal conditions of the cemetery. Ben’s headstone hadn’t even escaped the abuse, as in a particularly cruel act of fate, she’d discovered a crack had formed straight down its center—dividing the names _Ben Parker_ and _May Parker_ one last time.

“Okay. Sure,” May says, before she can fully process what she’s agreeing to. “What’s one day, right?”

Shelly instantly brightens. “You’re a lifesaver. Just make sure you have everything together before you leave, and I’ll be on call if you have questions about anything.”

“Sure.” It’s almost four—judging by the height of the stack, May won’t be leaving until least nine. “And, um. Good luck with Alex.”

Shelly manages a small laugh as she pushes away from the desk. “I think we lost all our luck five years ago. People like you—the ones that got everybody on the same side? You’re the lucky ones. But thanks anyway.”

May says nothing as her supervisor walks away, stinging from her words. It’s not Shelly’s fault—most of the people May works with don’t even know she was married, never mind what happened. Even if they did, she can’t argue with Shelly’s logic.

It _is_ lucky she and Peter were on the same side of the Blip. Lucky they didn’t have any loose ends or mismatched ages. Lucky, maybe, that she’d already lost Ben, so she didn’t have to worry about RRs or new personalities or irreconcilable differences.

But it still hurts.

May texts Peter to let him know she’ll be working late, but doesn’t say anything about tomorrow. She’ll have to tell him eventually, of course—maybe in the morning.

( _When it’s too late for him to say anything._ )

May puts her headphones on and tunes out both the world and the disapproving thoughts threatening to snap her resolve. It’s fine. Peter’s been too busy mourning his most recent loss to worry about an old one.

He probably won’t even notice.

As May settles in, she realizes Shelly hadn’t been wrong about the dossier—she’s already familiar with most of the discussion topics, and she’s particularly interested in the panel discussing superhero involvement in fundraising. Interest, however, can’t make up for sheer volume, and despite working straight through dinner it’s still pushing ten o’clock by the time she finishes.

That makes it two hours until midnight. Two hours until—

May puts the files away and hurries to the elevator. She did what she had to do—what Ben would have wanted. It’s just a date. Besides, she’d have to see the crack, and she—she doesn’t think she can handle that.

She’s saved from questioning her motives further when her phone buzzes in her pocket: Peter’s ringtone. It’s irrational, but fear stabs through her as she scrambles to tap _answer call_.

“Peter? Are you—”

“ _You still like meatball subs, right?_ ”

It’s Peter’s voice, but the question is so unexpected May checks the number anyway.

“ _I mean, I probably could_ _’ve_ _gone by Shahzada’s for gyros or something, but Mr. Delmar’s was on the way and he owed me a favor so—_ ”

“I like meatball subs, Peter.” May shifts the phone to her other ear and dodges around a taxi, knowing how long the boy can monologue if left to his own devices. She wills her heart to slow down. “Now why would I need one?”

“ _You weren’t home when I stopped by, so that definitely_ _means you skipped dinner._ ”

She can’t help but smile. “That predictable, huh?”

“ _I’ve seen chemical reactions less predictable than you._ ”

May feels her chest loosen. Maybe she’ll tell him after all—they could hang out together, maybe watch a movie or—

“ _But uh, I left it in on the counter so you should probably get to it fairly soon.”_

May’s heart plummets. “You’re already gone?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and May catches the signature _thwip_ sound of his webbing. “I… am normally gone by now?”

“Right. Right, of course.” The last remnant of hope May’d been clinging to fades. It’s Friday, so Peter’s curfew is two hours later than normal. He won’t be back until at least two, and May intends to be long asleep by then. “…I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“ _Hey, um—_ ”

May hangs up the phone, too afraid of what Peter is about to ask. He’s forgotten, right? He had to’ve. They would’ve _talked_ about it if he hadn’t.

The wedding ring feels heavy under her shirt, and she walks faster.

Her plan is simple. Eat the sandwich waiting for her on the counter. Pack a small bag for the trip tomorrow. Get in bed by eleven, and definitely don’t cry at the sight of the empty room. Fall asleep before midnight.

She succeeds at all of these except for the last one.

Instead, she’s still awake an hour later, her clock’s neon green numbers flashing from the bedside table: 12:07 a.m.

Three years ago ( _eight years ago_ ), the call would’ve come through about two minutes from now. But no one’s going to call her tonight, because everything is fine.

 _She’s one of the lucky ones_.

May rolls over and the vacant side of the bed feels cold against her skin.

12:08.

She gets up and goes to fix some tea.

As she rummages through the cabinets, the apartment is just as quiet as it was an hour ago. It’s been five months since the Blip, but they’ve only had their own apartment for a month of that, and their own stuff—which had been stored by the government, like all the possessions of the Blipped—for the last two weeks. May hasn’t had the time, or the energy, to unpack everything yet.

At last, she finds a box of cheap, store brand black tea in the back of the cabinet above the microwave.

The microwave reads 12:09.

She puts the box back, unopened.

And Ben is dead.

May drops into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and takes the chain with Ben’s ring on it off her neck. Light reflects off its surface—polished and untouched; pristine in a way it never was when it was on Ben’s hand.

She liked it better worn.

Her phone’s silent in her pocket, but she pulls it out anyway. Nothing from Peter. Nothing from Karen. Nothing even from Pepper, who in a bizarre twist of fate, is now the same age as she is—and bears the same kind of scars.

There’s one new message in her work email, though: _Itinerary_ , from FEMA HQ.

May sets her phone down and drops her head in her hands. What does the time matter, anyway? Ben’s just—he’s just as dead now as he was a minute ago.

May blinks away tears. _She has to move on_.

(But if she hadn’t already lost him, would the Blip have taken Ben, too? Or would he have been left behind, forced to find someone else to fill the gaping hole of those five years?)

( _Would she’ve hated him for it?_ )

The key scraping in the lock is May’s only warning before the front door slams open, a bundled up Peter flying in after it.

“Oh. Hey, May!” He gives her a wave, distracted, as he tosses his backpack, hat, and scarf at the coat rack. All three land neatly on their hooks. “You’re still up?”

He looks confused to see her, but not nearly as confused as she is—she slips the ring out of sight in a move she’s only fifty percent sure is fast enough for him not to notice.

“You’re home early,” May returns. It’s said only partially as a deflection. “…And you came in through the door.”

“Oh! Yeah, I wasn’t in the suit.” He shuffles past her to fish a cookie out of the jar on the counter, heedless of the crumbs that sprinkle the tile.

 _Not in the suit_? For one irrational second, May wonders if this is supposed to be some kind of code.

“Then what were you doing—” she notices the white strands in Peter’s hair and pivots mid-sentence—“that got webbing all over your hair?”

“What?” Peter’s hand shoots to his hairline, and when he touches the sticky substance his eyes widen in a comical imitation of his mask. “Oh, _shit_ —”

Peter abandons the cookie and shoves his head under the sink faucet, turning the hot water on full blast. “May, get—get the solvent from my room!”

May rolls her eyes, her melancholy and concern both forgotten as she watches him scrub frantically at his hair. Whatever he was up to, it certainly isn’t something to be alarmed by.

May opens the door to Peter’s bedroom and flicks on the light, the mess of boxes even worse in here than it is in the kitchen. Peter’s never been what one might call _tidy_ , so she’s prepared for the dirty laundry, various electronic parts, and half-eaten food littering the floor. What she’s notprepared for is the sight of his desk, which is covered from back to front in rows of bottles—some stacked haphazardly on top of one another, but each painstakingly labeled with the version model in cellophane tape and black sharpie.

May picks one up, curious, and is surprised by how much denser it feels than his previous webbing.

“You’re going to need to be more specific,” she calls.

“The one that says— _ow_ —34.1?”

The label on the one in her hand says 16.2, so she sets it carefully back down. It takes her another moment to find the one he’d requested—it’s hiding behind the lamp, under a half-finished physics paper—and by the time she gets back to the kitchen he’s succeeded at nothing except getting half his fingers stuck in his hair.

May unscrews the cap and unceremoniously dumps half the bottle over his matted curls. The effect is instantaneous: the white strands pinning his fingers snap, and the water washes away the quickly dissolving pieces. Peter takes his head out of the sink and shakes it rapidly, sending water droplets and webbing everywhere.

“You’re a lifesaver, May.”

May winces at the unintended echo of Shelly’s comment.

“Thanks.” She flicks a piece of webbing off her shirt. “Now why—”

“Oh, hey, before I forget, what time’re we going to see Ben tomorrow?”

The question startles May so badly she loses her grip on the bottle.

The second it leaves her hand Peter launches himself to the ceiling, apparently warned by his extra sense. The bottle, however, crashes to the floor—shattering on impact and splashing the foaming liquid across the vinyl and the bottom half of May’s sweatpants.

May stares at the mess puddling on the floor, the half-dissolved remnants in Peter’s hair dripping down to join it.

She purses her lips. “You couldn’t’ve used those reflexes to just catch it?”

“Uh—it’s not exactly that specific—”

May glares up at him.

“Right. I’ll, um—” Peter aims his wrist at the mop, seems to think better of it, and crawls over her head before dropping down to grab it by hand. “Sorry, that’s—that’ll stain if we don’t—”

“I swear, Peter—”

“Yep, got it.” Peter leverages the mop over the island to May, leary of both the mess and her rising temper. She takes it without a word and starts refilling the sink with hot water, adding dish soap to the mix this time.

Peter inches back around the island. “So… tomorrow?”

May pushes a larger chunk of glass out of the way with her foot, and Peter stoops to dump it into the trashcan. She’d hoped he’d forgotten. Assumed he wouldn’t think to ask in the first place.

“I have work.”

It’s a terse response, and it’s probably naïve to hope it’ll be enough to dissuade him. Sure enough, Peter just frowns.

“But it’s Saturday?”

 _She knows._ “Not all jobs are Monday through Friday, Peter.”

“I mean yeah, but you don’t—”

“Shelly asked me this afternoon.” The mop slaps against the tile, harder than it needs to. “I was going to tell you in the morning.”

“Why would—okay.” Peter tosses the lid, no longer needed, into the garbage. “So what time are you leaving? Or coming back? We could—”

“It’s an out-of-town thing.”

She hopes that’s enough, that he’ll let her finish cleaning up in peace, but Peter’s chosen the worst possible time to display the Parker Stubbornness.

“How _far_ out of town?”

May sighs.

“FEMA HQ—train’s leaving at six. I’ll be lucky if I’m back by midnight.” She finds it easier not to care as long as she focuses on the floor. “My supervisor was going but she had a family thing at the last second.”

May risks a glance at Peter: there’s an entire dictionary’s worth of emotion in the wrinkle of his brow.

“…But _you_ have a family thing.”

 _You’re the lucky one_.

She wrings the mop out before slapping it down again, pushing with as much spite as she can muster. “Do I?”

“I mean… yeah?”

Before May can pull the mop back towards her, Peter’s in her space, holding the handle to keep her attention on him. “What’s going on, May? I thought—I mean, we always go on the day he—”

Something snaps in May’s chest. She yanks the handle away, breaking his grip despite the fact that he could easily stop her.

“ _No, we don’t_.”

Peter actually flinches back at her tone, but May can’t allow herself to feel guilty. Not when feeling angry feels so much _better_. “In fact, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure we haven’t gone in _five_ _years_. So what’s one more, right?”

“But that doesn’t—we were _gone_ , May, you can’t—”

“Can’t what?” Adrenaline burns through her veins. “We haven’t talked about it in _months_. What makes tomorrow so special?”

“May—”

“No. No, it’s been eight years; we don’t have to—a lot of people mourn for way less than that. Can’t I just _move on_ if I want to?”

They’re barely a foot apart, shadows flickering harshly under the kitchen lights. She expects him to push back, already gearing up for a screaming match—but Peter, for once in his life, isn’t looking for a fight.

“…Do you?”

Her anger’s still blended so heavily with her grief she’s not sure which is which. “What?”

“Want to move on,” he says, eyes on the soap dripping from the mop head. “Do you—is that what you want.”

“Yes!”

She responds without hesitation, but the moment the word leaves her lips, May knows it’s a lie. Judging by the expression on Peter’s face, he knows it, too.

“I mean, I…” May trails off, the anger hemorrhaging out of her no matter how badly she wants it to stay. She turns abruptly to put the mop back in the sink, ostensibly to rinse the strings, but primarily so that Peter won’t see the tears gathering in her eyes. “I thought I was. Before all… this.”

Behind her, Peter eases himself up onto the counter, legs folding underneath him. “The job?”

“No. Just… _everything_.” May cards her fingers through the mop strands, bubbles spilling over the edge of the counter. She might as well let everything spill out, too.

“I used to see him everywhere,” she admits, so softly, but she knows that won’t be a problem for Peter. “It’s dumb, but… it was like he was still here, in at least some way. The smell of his cologne in my clothes. The taste of his kiss in his favorite latte. The sound of his laughter in that stupid car’s horn. And then the Blip happened, and it was five years later and he—he went from being everywhere to being nowhere at all.”

“May…”

“Did you know the company he worked for closed?” The last of the solvent rinses down the drain. “Bankrupt, two years into the Blip. And uh, the bench he proposed to me on is gone. And the coffee shop where we first kissed. I’ve lived in New York my whole life and... it’s like I don’t even recognize it anymore. And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, you know, but then you—you don’t even—”

May cuts herself off, then cuts off the water.

It’s quiet, but for the low hum coming from the heater in the corner of the room, busy trying to warm the apartment all by itself.

“…I don’t what, May?”

The words are said so simply, so _like Ben_ that tears instantly streak down May’s face.  
She leans against the edge of the sink and watches the bubbles float on its surface.

“You don’t _talk_ about him,” she says, finally. “And I—I know it’s been years and you have so many other things to focus on, so many other people to miss, but when we don’t even _mention_ Ben it makes me feel like—like—”

She breaks off and sets the mop down in the sink. It disturbs the pile of suds, and a cascade of bubbles drift into the air. She brushes away tears. “…Like he never even existed.”

Peter shifts behind her, but she doesn’t turn.

“So… when you agreed to go to D.C.,” he says, “it wasn’t because you didn’t want to visit Ben. It was because you thought _I_ wouldn’t.”

“Not just that,” May says, quickly, because it sounds so petty out loud. “It’s like—if Ben’s company is gone, I could just not think about it. But having to walk by the building, with all its windows boarded up and the roof caving in—that’s worse. I’d rather not see it at all than see how it’s changed. And Jesus, Peter, Ben’s grave and that stupid crack, it’s all that rolled into one. I just… I felt like running away was easier.”

Peter says nothing at first, and May can’t bring herself to look at him—not that it would matter, as her tears are blurring her vision too much, anyway.

Peter slides off the counter, landing softly on his feet. “Let’s go.”

“What?”

“Let’s go visit Ben.”

 _That_ gets her attention. She looks at him like he’s lost his mind ( _because he has_ ). “Peter, even if I wanted to go I _just_ told you I’ll be gone all day—”

“I know. I mean now.” He licks his lips, then tilts his head towards the microwave. “It’s technically tomorrow already, right?”

When May sees the time, the green numbers that’d mocked her earlier only strengthen her resolve. She shakes her head. “If it’s almost one then that means I need to be at the train station in less than five hours.”

“Were you planning on sleeping tonight?”

 _No_ , but that doesn’t make it a good idea. “Peter, it’s too dark—”

“We have flashlights.”

“It’s February—”

“Coats and blankets.”

“And it’s not safe—”

“I am literally Spider-Man.”

May snorts, then turns to yank the plug out of the sink. God, why did he have to inherit _all_ their stubbornness? “Look, I told you that I don’t feel like I can face that right now. If you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it. You’ll just have to—”

“Trust me?”

May turns around in surprise. A single bubble, stirred up by the movement, floats quietly between them.

“I know you normally win, but.” Peter shrugs. “If I dig the board out, I feel like I’m due this time.”

It takes a second for May to understand his meaning, but when she does, she’s struck all over again by how much _Ben_ there is in Peter.

She doesn’t have the heart to say no to both of them.

“…Okay.”

The electricity in Peter’s smile would be enough to light up the entire cemetery. “Okay.”

May finishes cleaning and then drying the rest of the kitchen while Peter packs up everything they might need—judging by how stuffed his backpack is, he wasn’t kidding about the blankets. Once she’s finished with the kitchen, May goes to her room to change back into work clothes and leaves Peter to double check the train schedule. Finally, when May is ready, they take the train to the stop on 69th and Metropolitan Ave.

Neither of them say much the whole ride, and May nerves twist themselves in knots as the silence stretches on. Peter’s all but vibrating beside her as they approach the cemetery gates, but what May sees just makes her all the more certain that this was a terrible, terrible idea.

The imposing, black-iron fence that scared Peter as a child has been left to rust and degrade: several of the top spikes have broken off, either by bored teens or just the wear and tear of time, and creeping ivy curls around the remaining spikes and posts to choke out the last remnant of respectability. Trash of every form litters the overgrown grass, and the long shadows cast by the moonlight illustrate everything this cemetery represents:

Abandonment.

May’s feet freeze to the sidewalk, a reaction that has nothing to do with the actual temperature.

“I can’t.”

Peter turns at her voice, his hand already on the gate handle.

“I’m sorry, Peter. I just—” May backs up a half step. “We shouldn’t have come.”

Peter looks through the gate, then returns to her side to offer his hand. “It’s okay, May. I promise.”

May bites her lip, torn between the comfort of his hand and the comfort of running far, far away. But his hand doesn’t falter, so May relinquishes, threading her fingers through his.

Peter smiles and clicks his flashlight on—Ben’s headstone is a decent ways in, and the light from the streetlamps won’t quite reach. The light illuminates the rust on the gates’ hinges, but Peter heaves them open without issue.

“Just follow me,” he says, pulling her through. “I know the area.”

His words spark an old memory, and May half expects to see the jungle they once imagined brought to life in the overgrown cemetery. As Peter leads her down the winding paths, however, she’s surprised to discover that while the rest of the grounds are just as overrun as the fence, _this_ path is completely clean: no crumpled litter, no weeds poking through the sidewalk, no mutilated plastic flowers.

May’s starting to get the feeling she’s missed something. “Peter, what—”

The Parker headstones come into view.

Richard and Mary’s is first: the five years’ worth of grime has been washed away, the surrounding grass is neatly trimmed, and fresh flowers sit on either side: green for Mary, and yellow for Richard. But behind theirs is hers and Ben’s, and while it’s received the same treatment, that’s not what catches May’s eye.

The crack—that gruesome, hideous line that separated the name _Ben Parker_ from _May Parker_ —is gone.

May lets go of Peter’s hand and drops in front of the stone, brushing her fingertips across its surface. At first she thinks it’s been fixed completely, but then she’s surprised to discover that the patch gives a little; the texture more porous than rock could ever be.

She looks at Peter for an explanation, and he carefully rolls up one of his sleeves: his web-shooter, wrapped around his wrist.

“I had to tweak the formula to get it to stay hardened instead of just dissolving,” he says. “But unless it starts raining like, tetrachloroethylene and a whole bunch of other stuff, it’ll hold.”

“Peter, you—I don’t understand when you could’ve—” May’s voice leaves her, lost as she thinks of all the bottles in his room. This must’ve taken him _weeks_.

Peter misunderstands her reaction, as he yanks his sleeve back down and starts stammering. “I’m sorry, I—I tested it on other stuff before putting it on Ben’s, I promise it’s totally safe. But if you don’t like it I can—”

“No, Peter. No.” May traces the scar that’d been left between their names, so painstakingly filled by her nephew. “…It’s perfect.”

 _It’s real_.

A tentative smile lights across Peter’s face, then he swings his backpack down on the grass. May rises to her feet and watches him, her arms crossed against the cold, as he spreads a blanket on the ground. As May kneels back down, this time to sit with him instead of Ben’s grave, Peter takes out a note and leans over to place it in the metal box in front of his parents’ stone.

It’s only then that May notices a similar box tucked behind Ben’s, the flowers Peter had placed covering it nearly entirely.

Peter catches her staring. “I, uh. I write letters to Ben sometimes, too.”

May’s thoughts trip over themselves, trying to match the boy in front of her with the one she’s experienced over the last few months—the one who’s spent hours fixing a crack, but hasn’t so much as breathed her husband’s name in her presence.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Peter looks away, clearly struggling to explain it himself. Wind whistles through the tombstones and into May’s bones, chilling her earlier relief. Wordlessly, Peter pulls another blanket out of his bag and offers it to her.

“Ben’s death is… different,” he says, as May takes the blanket. “I was just a kid when my parents died, and with Tony—what you said about seeing Ben everywhere; it’s like that, but… literally.”

May flinches, remembering that just on their way to the cemetery, they’d passed at least three murals honoring the fallen hero.

“But with Ben, it’s like… Part of the reason he’s gone is because of me.”

“Peter—”

“No, it’s okay. I know it’s more complicated than that.” He picks at his nails. “I think I convinced myself that I didn’t have the _right_ to talk about him, or that you wouldn’t want me to. That, uh. That was a dumb decision. Obviously.”

May offers a self-deprecating smile. “Guess we both tried moving on in ways that weren’t so great.”

Peter laughs. “Guess so.”

They lapse into silence, May watching the wind play with the curls in Peter’s hair. After a moment, he clears his throat.

“Did I tell you MJ liked my laugh?”

May arches her eyebrows.

“I mean, technically she just said it wasn’t as annoying as she thought it’d be.” Even in the dim lighting, May can see that Peter’s neck is turning visibly red. “But, um. I told her I got it from my mom. …I wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t for you.”

May’s eyes drift to Mary’s name on the gravestone, but when Peter reaches out, it’s towards the box next to Ben’s.

He turns it over in his hands, eyes not leaving the ground. “And, uh. I just realized that you might not know, either.”

“Know what?”

“How much of Ben you have.”

It feels like a sucker punch, and though May tries to hide it, she can’t stop the muscle in her jaw from twitching. For some reason, it makes Peter chuckle.

“Like that.”

“ _What_?”

“The way your jaw gets all jumpy when you’re concerned. It’s something Ben used to do.”

May stares at him, stunned, but then all she can see is that tension in Ben’s face: when Peter did something stupid, when work was frustrating, when he was losing at poker. Her hand drifts up and hovers over her jawline.

“I know it’s not the same, but I guess… I’ve had to move on from a different life before.” His gaze drifts to Mary and Richard’s stone. “And you made sure I never thought that meant what you’ve been thinking it means with Ben.”

“And that is?”

“That moving on means letting go—that we don’t carry those people with us anymore,” Peter says. “But it can’t mean that, because they’re _part_ of us. We couldn’t get rid of them if we tried.”

May closes her eyes, the ache of losing Mary, Richard, _Ben_ , swirling in her chest. “Then what _does_ it mean?”

Peter runs his hand over the chiseled names of his parents before he speaks. “…I think it just means making _room_. It’s like… So I call Mary ‘Mom,’ because she is, right?”

May frowns. “Sure?”

“And… I call my mom, ‘May,’ because she is, too.”

May’s heart stops.

Peter’s lived with her for over a decade, and he’s never, _ever_ referred to her that way; she’s never asked him to, never wanted him to.

But he’s given it freely, and it’s the most precious thing she’s ever received.

“ _Peter._ ”

That’s all she has to say before she’s in his arms and he’s in hers, and for the first time in months, May feels _whole_.

Shelly was right—she _is_ one of the lucky ones. But not because of who she has or hasn’t lost.

It’s because of who she’s found.

After she feels like she can breathe again, they sit side by side and Peter opens the box from Ben’s grave. He selects one of the goofier notes he’s written, and starts reading it aloud for May—when he finishes that one, he takes another, and another, and when he runs out, he just recounts some of his favourite memories with Ben instead.

May laughs, and sometimes she cries, but it’s okay.

There’s room for all of them _._

They stay like that until the sun starts to rise, casting a soft orange glow through the trees and tinging the shadows red. May watches as Peter carefully packs everything up, knowing she needs to head towards the train station soon, but unwilling to leave just yet.

Peter turns to her, and a smile flits across his face. “Ice cream?”

“At five in the morning?”

He shrugs. “It’s New York.”

Yeah. Yeah, it is—and there’re some things even five years can’t take away.

She takes his hand, and he pulls her up with an air of ease that still amazes her. They walk to the gate and Peter latches it behind them, and though the ghosts of those they lost will always be with them, it’s just May and Peter that step out into the city.

He slips his hand into hers.

They leave the graveyard behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for travelling with me on this exploration of loss, grief, and love. I adore these two and their relationship, and diving into it in all its ups and downs has been so delightful (even when it wasn't cooperating and I wanted to chuck it out the window, haha). I hope you've enjoyed. <3
> 
> Fanart inspired by this chapter & the first can be found [here!](https://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/post/617753574419611648/mothers-day-fanart-inspired-by-my-5-1-may)
> 
> I will love you forever should you choose to drop a comment either here or on my [tumblr](http://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/). ❤


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